Match Review: Gaelic Lions FC vs Swiss FC

• DF Liam McGinley
• MD Petesy O'Brien
• -- Conor McHugh
• -- Stephen Moran
• -- Rob Church
• -- Darren Murray
• -- James Devane
• -- Shane Buttimer
• -- Brian O'Reilly
• -- Seb Santoro
• -- Simon Lloyd

• -- Neil Corrigan
• -- Hans Van den Hoogen
• -- Mark Hanley
• -- Dane Smith
• -- Matt Heslop

Knock knock?

Who's there?! A little old lady? A little old lady who? I didn't know you could yodel?! Hah hah! A classic Swiss-related joke to kick off the proceedings this week! Yodeling, as you all know, is a major feature of folk music or 'Volksmusik' which hails from Switzerland and involves repeated and rapid changes of pitch between the low-pitch chest register (or "chest voice") and the high-pitch head register or 'falsetto' (which I guess must mean "head voice") but some things are not mentioned on Wikipedia, which is irritating, or 'irritierend' which means irritating in German, the most common language of Switzerland! No, Swiss isn't a language you stupid bastards! Imagine thinking that it was you utter imbeciles?! (Hotspurs are all sitting at their desks scratching their heads at the moment, wondering WTF is going on!) Classic! The yodel is a familiar sound around the 'canton' of Turf City, not as familiar now that Oli from Rangers has gone back to Ireland, but is still heard when Urs and his band of merry yodelers are about! In between yodeling they can of course occasionally be overheard speaking Romansh, which is, of course, because most of the Swiss lads are from the southeastern trilingual canton of Graubünden, and, as is designated by Article 4 of the Federal Constitution, is a national language of Switzerland along with German, French, and Italian! Anyway, I could talk about the longtime rural traditions of singing and grassroots entertainment, as well as the development of language all day, but we have a game to talk about. And I think I am over 50 words by this point which means Chalky has to put away his ledger for another week. It's the small victories! Compared to last season it was a veritable pride of 16 Lions who made their way to Turf and it was with a well-deserved warning of public urination ringing in our ears that we kicked-off a scrappy first 15 to 20 mins, which was all-credit to the Swiss who pressed hard and made it very difficult for us initially. The Lions persevered, however, kept the ball and took the chances that came our way to go in at HT with a well-deserved 2-0 lead. Brian O'Reilly O'Reilly taking the plaudits but not getting MOM for publicly urinating the week before the little scamp! Although, I'm not saying he's the Pisser or anything....... We had a chance for a quick chat at HT and pinpoint a few areas of improvement and lo and behold it was pretty much game over soon afterwards with goals from the housewives' favorite Neil Corrigan, another couple from 'Pisser' Brian 'the pisser' O'Reilly O'Reilly, Pistol Petesy (who would have been better suited to be the Pisser with the alliteration possibilities, but alas, it was not to be) and then Darren Hanley added the icing on the cake with his first (or maybe not) goal for the club! Or maybe it was Mark Murray, I can't remember. Or maybe I was drunk and wrote the numbers wrong on the team sheet. I may have been pissed, but I didn't piss. I'm not a PISSER! Special mention to Liam 'Liam' McGinley who played in goals due to Anders' missus being mean to us again and getting a clean sheet under his belt to boot! Well done Liam! MOM to the Swiss goes to Joe the 'keeper, all the best mate hope the injury isn't too bad. MOM for the Lions is CONTROVERSIAL to say the least as it is going to Seb the Argentinian Beefcake who has really stepped up his game the past few weeks and was just a pain in the hole for the Swiss all day. O'Reilly scores four and doesn't get it but he knows I love him anyway when he keeps it in the oul shorts, wha'?! Thanks to the Swiss for a good game and best of luck for the rest of the season! I will leave you with this. PROPER SOUNDS! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJHn542lPok

• Cyrill Binder DF
• Muhammad Fadhil DF
• Julian Rehkopf --
• Roy Lloret --
• Urs Brutsch --
• Mohamed Aly --
• Joe Giani --
• Talant Begaliev --
• Heinz Braegger --
• Marc Fink --
• Regis Stevens --

• Takayasu Yamamoto --
• Ahmad Amzar bin Mukhtar --

A set back

The trend of Swiss FC was showing upwards lately - not showing in the results though, but the team got stronger and better organized. That trend experienced a sharp correction against Gaelic Lions. The coach was busy getting a squad together. In the end we had more absentees then names on the teamsheet. Not a good start against a high-flying Gaelic team. But the first half was good. It was great to have Regis Stevens back after one year on the sideline, courtesy of a not-so-friendly knee of an opponent goalkeeper. With Regis upfront we finally had some possession in the last third of the pitch. Gaelic clinically finished their two chances of the first half. With only two players on the bench, one of them totally untested, the second half turned into a long 45 minutes. We soon found ourselves down 3 goals and that's when the heads dropped for the first time this season. Not taking away anything from Gaelic Lions who were clinical in their finishing and crisp in their passing, we made it far too easy for them. I can't recall whether it was on 3 or 4 goals were the assist came directly off the foot of a Swiss player. We can't really call this defending. It was Arsenal-esque at times. Speaking of the Premier League: we take comfort that Crystal Palace has gone 7 games without scoring, so our immediate target is to do better than Palace. To add injury to insult (literally), man of the match Joe Giani injured his back in the last few minutes and had to go off, so we had to finish with 10 men. With all the negativity of the result and the performance in the second half, there is light at the end of the tunnel: players will come back for next week's game, we have Regis, our leading goal scorer back in action, and we will get our pitch back this week for our regular training sessions. And then later this year, we'll get a brand new training pitch at the Swiss Club! So lots of things to look forward to, and we will start with a good training session on Wednesday to prepare for the clash against GAS. Referee had a superb game. No yellow cards, no issues at all.