“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
– Winnie the Pooh
…And so we go into the international break with the usual reluctance. While the sounds of fingers tapping on tables and the slow tick of the grandfather clock chisel away at your mind, we’ll quickly round up what happened last weekend. It will feel like a long ten days, but on the other side we will get to see the final matchups of the first round of fixtures, unless something has gone badly, badly wrong…
“Balls. More balls… Too many balls.”
– Earl Hickey
Premier League
It’s a funny old game and in a funny old week the top three all lost allowing the next five to gain some ground. Down in eighth, Vanishing Spray somehow beat third-placed Boss but saw the four teams immediately above them all take a share of the points too.
Bigger than Brolin got their second win over the League leaders in three weeks. They enjoyed a 31-19 win in the Champions League in Week 5 and took three League points off them here last weekend too. Similarly, The Money Team repeated their Champions League win over Smash and Grab and kept their position in the top half. No-one moved up or down this week, but the fight for the money has intensfied!
Next week every team gets to play their last remaining opponent. For the Premier League, this means the top two are facing off, winner takes top spot. Third-placed Boss plays winless AC Rey; tied on fifteen points, fourth-place takes on fifth; tied on twelve, sixth plays seventh and finally eighth face ninth with both desperate to climb out of the relegation zone.
Championship
We’ve got a new leader at the top of the Championship! Up until the start of this season AFC Chester had an exact 50% win percentage across all competitions. In the League this year it’s 87.5% – thats W7, L1. Only one team has performed better this term, more on that later. The one game they did lose was to the team in second place – Tralfamadore Zoo – who lost their second League game this week, meaning that AFC Chester now sit alone at the top, three small but important points clear.
Chucky Pad Warriors joined the 100-club earlier this season, but have struggled since then. After losing to Chester, the last team they need to face down is Tralfamadore Zoo. Despite being short of wins, the Warriors have outscored the Zoo three times in the last four and will come into the game looking for revenge for being knocked out of the Cup in 2018, on the losing end of a 53-40 Quarter-Final.
Branwellington stay on nine points while Banana Swans move up to fifth and swap places with Sporting Wicker Park, who lost to perennial rivals GoFYS. GoFYS stay third but are three points closer to second place. They next play bottom side SB Town Baggers who are just 45 matchpoints shy of passing the 10,000 milestone.
League One
Last week K.H. Granitza Sting became the third team to reach 10,000 all-time matchpoints. This week, the League One leaders went up against a Cabezazo team that had dropped from top to eighth in the last four games. Both teams opted for a 3-5-2 formation.
KH watched with glee as Mané netted for the third consecutive game against Leicester and Jiménez remarkably got two assists against Man City. Both teams had a goal from midfield but while the Sting struggled to raise points in defence, Increíble collected 20points thanks to Arsenal and Newcastle clean sheets and took the win by a single point.
Elsewhere, Jordan Ayew helped Cornballers win a low-scoring match to go top and Kante’s goal against So’ton ensured Relic FC got their second win of the season, but they remain in last place. Top play bottom in the last week of the first set.
Hung LAB And Bacuna Matata win and move up to their best positions so far this season – Bacuna climb up to sixth despite only fielding nine men and Hung break into the top three with a big shunt from David Luiz.
League Two
Where do we start here – Tiger Tail’s 8th consecutive win or the 67 matchpoints that The Globes just scored?! Pity poor Gloopy, only five teams in the entire Fifty scored more than 40, but they found one of them. The Globes get their third win of the season and pull level on points with Gloopy, also BattleVAR and Obi-Wan. The Globes’ last game of the set is against bottom-of-the-League Chicken and Bacon, who also won their first game in five.
So I guess I went with that huge score story. That was cool and all, but Tiger Tail are “doing a Liverpool” and that deserves its own paragraph. Just one win away from grand slamming League Two, Tiger Tail have a nine-point cushion and the joint-top Best-ish score tonight. The only League team they haven’t played yet is BattleVAR. The Galácticos may have scored 93 matchpoints less this season(!), but they have twice outscored TTR on a gameweek (GWs 2 & 5) so this fixture will not be a simple walkover.
Finally, I lied to you earlier. That wasn’t TTR’s 8th consecutive League win, it was their 11th including the last three games of last season, and they are 14-1-1 in the last sixteen!
National League
It has not escaped my attention that last week I wrote about this League beginning to open up. That all imploded last weekend under the weight of these ten new superstars; the NL is back to being just six points wide. Housewives’ Favourite collapsed in on themselves and gave Chi Spurs the chance to catch up; Spurs got their fifth win and go into the break just 10 matchpoints behind top spot. Cumberland FC also impressed on a difficult weekend and K’n’R move off the bottom and up to eighth.
Say Something About This