Dead Trousers 0 - Torpedo Entenhausen 9

Yes, believe your eyes, that is 9 (nine, 0b1001, 0o11) goals. Torpedo Entenhausen are a few matches into the Rückrunde, a typically German concept. German football leagues, from the Bundesliga down to Bochum's spare time league, are arranged so that each team plays all the other teams (the Hinrunde) and then plays them again in the same order, but at the other ground (the Rückrunde). So, because we played against the Dead Trousers at our ground in the sixth match of the season, we played the return fixture at their ground in the nineteenth match. If you are good at maths, you will have calculated that there are 14 teams in the league, so Hinrunde and Rückrunde consist of each 13 games, and over the season we play 26 matches.

This will all seem terribly obvious and boring to any German reader, but being English I find it most wonderful. In England, the fixtures are calculated by that mysterious entity, the fixtures computer. Nothing causes more paranoia than this dreaded calculating device, which makes sure that Chelsea always get away games in freezing Bolton after european ties and that sacked managers meet up with their old club exactly twice a season. People even get paranoid about non-existent computers.

The Rugby League does not have a fixtures computer, but, if it had, it would be one that does not like Widnes.

There is some just cause for this dread, fear and misunderstanding of the fixtures computer. Take Sheffield Wednesday, for example. This season they will have played Hull City twice before the year is out, but will first face local rivals Sheffield United in January. They will then play them home and away within a month. Why? This computer seems to be an exercise in Chaos Theory. A single flower show, balloon fiesta, or gay pride march anywhere in the country can throw the whole system into imbalance and result in millions of people up and down the land going to somewhere completely different, and their team getting badly beaten by someone else instead, which brings me back to the match yesterday.

The first game (in the Hinrunde) ended 2-2, but we continued our strong Rückrunde form by winning by 9 goals to zero. Their goalkeeper was of the William Foulkes mould, and initially, despite our dominance, we struggled to beat him as he quickly closed the angles. By closing the angles I don't mean that he rushed out of goal (too much effort), I just mean that he turned to face you.

Martin, our stalwart supporter, suggested that we aimed for the bottom corners of the goal in an attempt to exploit his immobility. The scoreline suggests that this tactic worked in the end, and I scored too with an unchallenged run from midfield and a shot into the bottom left-hand corner from just outside the box.