HOT PRESS WIN SUPERB CUP JOUST

There is no finer setting in world football than what has colloquially become known as the Munchies Arena, in Dublin’s prestigious TUD campus in Grangegorman. It proved the perfect setting for a cup joust between Hot Press and Phoenix FC.

As with many games recently, the wind was a big factor – with Hot Press playing into the teeth of a fierce breeze in the first 45 minutes. The Munchies played well and created chances – but near misses are not what the medicine man ordered! The home side defended well too, with Filipe Pinheiro and Bruno Guerra in outstanding form, until the swirling gale gave rise to an error in the Munchies’ defence. 1-0 at half time.

After the break, Hot Press gained control. Cutting in from the right, Ross Quirke smacked a left-footed drive into the corner. 1-1. With William Ferreira, Javi Barona and Samir Benkouiten turning the screw in midfield, the Munchies were dominant – and they were rewarded with a fine strike courtesy of Jordan Doyle. 2-1.
It might have been a cruise from there, but with just seven minutes remaining, a mistake in midfield saw Phoenix create – and take – a rare chance. Extra time it was. The football was pulsating, with Hot Press dominating, and Phoenix dangerous on the counter. The breakthrough came when a schmozzle in the Phoenix area saw Jordan Omorodion pounce and crash the ball home. 3-2. And thus it ended.

“That was a great game of football,” Hot Press player-manager Niall Stokes told his customary post-match media conference. “We passed the ball well, created loads of chances, took a few of them well, and generally showed what we are all about.”

“And what’s that?” the man from RTÉ asked, shoving his microphone a little bit closer to the Munchies’ majordomo’s mouth.

“Listen, I have no intention of eating your microphone, for the simple reason that it does not look very tasty,” the legendary No.10 said, pushing the mic away. “Next question, please.”

“What do you think of the suggestion that the offside rule should be changed, following a series of VAR bust-ups,” the reporter from the Irish Currant Bun asked. “And would you mind not using any words longer than six letters in your answer, please. I want to be able to understand you for a change.”

“What?” the Munchies main-man bellowed in response. “You have the outrageous temerity to ask me questions of an existential nature which are fraught with all manner of at the very minimum quasi-philosophical conundrums, of a kind that will not be satisfactorily interrogated without properly-articulated recourse to fundamental issues of over-arching governance and then you adopt a deeply anti-intellectual and gruesomely dictatorial posture by attempting to instruct – if that isn’t too ambitious a part of the modern lexicon for a mere scribbler like you to comprehend – me to engage in the wanton fabrication of a deliberately-induced and therefore highly insulting illiteracy.

“Well, let me tell you,” the Munchies player-manager added, wincing visibly, “that in a post-quantum physics interpretation of the many universes that currently co-exist, it is far more than just a neophyte’s example of neo-Heideggerian phenomenology when I say that the evidential distinction between so called ‘daylight’ and 'not-daylight’ in the matter of offside can only be satisfactorily differentiated by engaging with the essentially non-didactic essence of dialectic thinking that ultimately underlies all of our presumed-theoretical concepts of reason, without the unnecessary or otherwise unprovoked intervention of VAR, with all of the semiotic burden acknowledged which that newly-minted acronym connotes.”

The big No.10 looked afresh at the inhabitants of the room, which was filled, he now realised, with the sound of people snoring. He was puzzled to see that a very large electric cattle prod was being used by the security team on duty to rouse the hacks from their shockingly deep slumbers. He shook his head sadly.

“And to think that all of these miserable wretches went to college,” he said aloud to no one in particular.
The season is young yet.