Knocked the bastard off!

Nick on the top of Mt Fuji.  Awesome work Nick!!

The pasting of Petone

Good win today guys.  Some great football played with a lot of passes strung together.

Scorers (assists) are:
Rauru (Heath)
Bakky (Paddy)
Carrick (Rauru)
Lloyd (?)
Carrick (?)
Paddy (Carrick?)
Rauru (Gerald)
Heath (Rauru)

Nominations needed for Pony/Stallion too.

Pony
Lot of missed goals.  Any terrible ones?  Can't think of anything, except...
A certain T Walker with a blatant handball to give away a penalty to give up a clean sheet before being moved up front to try and break his duck and to walk the talk which so often comes out of his mouth.  He wasn't exactly jumping at the chance (surprisingly, since he's such a bloody expert at what strikers should be doing ;) ), but did so and was given a golden opportunity to get off the mark this season after being put through one on one with the keeper.  The list of scorers above is an indication of how that one on one went!

Stallion
Again, not a huge amount of things that I can think of.  There was a player who looked a bit like this though

Not sure if 'Stallion' would be the most appropriate name for the award though...

Leave your thoughts/votes in the comments.

Stallions 4 - 2 Naenae

Think Carrick's might make this video?

Another must win game against mid-table opposition, though the game was hardly conducive to the usual high standard of Stallions football with key personnel missing and Kelburn Park a slippery mess. Kicking off with only 10 men (Tim making a typically late start to the game and the season), we took a while to get going. In a flat first half (several of us playing out of position), Heath continued his rich vein of scoring form by flicking a header over the top of the oncoming keeper to make it 1-0. Paul was also having a blinder in goal, making a number of top notch saves.

On to the second half, and 15mins in Rauru makes it 2-0 with a great flick over the keeper (from a speculative 50m through-ball from Aaron…or did you pick him out? Eds note: I was calling for the ball to be put through. Whether Aaron meant it or not...). On to the 20 min mark and Rauru gets chopped in the box - Naenae down to 10 men and the game is effectively over. Ra is hurting (and Paddy’s away), so I (Carrick) pick up the ball and place it on the spot. Not even a squeak from Tim or Bakky. Aiming bottom right (having missed bottom left with my last two penalty attempts in the past decade), the ball is slotted between the keepers legs. 3-0, and pony award safely secured. A few minutes later and its 4-0…great build up down the left (Eds note: Rauru to Tharron to Heath in a move Barca circa 2011 would have been proud of) , Heath’s shot is parried across the goal and I (Carrick) slide it in to score another gimme. Game over. Though we did manage to leak two late goals (it’s the Stallions way). The penalty was dubious to say the least, though Paul did well to get a hand to it (and duly dislocated his finger (before putting it back in himself) before playing upfront – well worthy of Stallion. Eds note: Not to mention when he was keeper taking on and skinning an advancing striker). 4-1. Some poor defending from the make-shift backline saw Naenae score another late goal. 4-2

All up, a crap day for football, but a good effort from the bare 11. Another 3 points in the bag and the Stallies are up to second on the table (though we’ll probably need to beat BNU, Accies, UH, Olympic and Petone to finish in the top two).

Another game, another 3 points - Naenae fall

Well we made that hard for ourselves - 4-0 up against 10 men with 20 to go, oh well, thats the way of the Stallion I guess.

Stallion: Paul - A huge game, kept us in it for that first half, finished off with a great flourish - rounding the striker with some fancy footwork! And then dislocating the finger with an almost penalty save.

Pony: Carrick - The worst penalty to be scored EVER.

Goals:

Heath (assist - Bakky)

Rauru (Aaron)

Carrick (Rauru)

Carrick (Heath)

Accies thrashed by Karori which sees us go back to second but brings Karori back into the mix - worst possible result after the travesty of a couple of weeks back.

Back to admire some glorious Brazilian defending - they just need to be given more license to get forward I reckon.

Stallions 3, Upper Hutt 2, Heath 2

Damn we looked tired and sore after backing up. A good solid win though, some real nice play in moments and it never felt like we were going to lose it. REAL good to see Tom out there.

2 great goals for Heath (1 times assist Gerald, can't remember the other)
1 x pen Rauru (dubious assist for Gerald).

A nice heard on the sidelines (or from the goal mouth): Paul: "Its going wide!", Tangihaere: 'Um no, its not).  Goal.

Stallion: ???
Pony: Gerald - you have heard of the one-inch punch, this was the one-inch miss. Shocking. Look forward to the rematch.

Accies-Brooklyn a 0-0 draw.

Uni Stallions 1 - 4 Uni 'Accies'

Will the real Uni Accies please stand up?

A hard fought game that will go down in the record books as a loss, but it was a tough pill to swallow.  Stunning goal by Tharron to pop his Stallions cherry and ensure that he doesn't have to skull his beer and sour cream drink at the end of the year.  While Tharron's finish was Stallion worthy, Stallion for me has to go to Tangihaere for being penalised for calling out his own name too aggressively and intimidating the opposition.  That's the ultimate Stallion for me, being scary cause you yell too loud.  To be fair, the ref probably isn't the first person to be scared by a Maori fulla yelling at him one a cold dark night coming from out of the shadows ;).  Be too harsh to give anyone a Pony as I felt we all did some bloody hard yards out there for little result in the end.  Bring on Upper Hutt

Goals (assist):  Tharron (no one.  I crossed to Tharron, he took a shot which got blocked but came back to him which he finished).

What - no Accies in the team club of the week? But they had a big win.

Uni Stallions 4 - 1 Eastbourne

Match report from Bakky: The game was played on a very small pitch, which I though we played well on. There was a lot of niggles to the ref (Bakky) and a lot of niggling towards the opposition. Little shits need a spanking :-) and the stallions were the team to give them one. The game started slow and it took a scrappy shot from 40 yards to sneak into the near post, early goal to Eastbourne! (Eds note: 40 yards?! I thought people only exagerate when it's their own goal they're talking about. It was more like 20 yards, 25 tops)  I would say on this pitch it was actually from around 25yrds. (Not very well hit but effective). (Eds note: Oh, I should have kept reading I guess.  But just cause the pitch is smaller doesn't make...never mind).  We needed to shut down the runners from the mid field. The referee was being assessed but made a few errors both ways but from what I saw I thought he had a reasonable game, even if I gave him a bollocking constantly throughout the first half, The Assessor came to me and said if he was refereeing he would have sent me off, I said to him that I wouldn't have said what I said as he would have given the penalty….Once we calmed ourselves down we started adding on the pressure and finally our first goal came from some great play down the right, it ended up with Heath putting in a long throw from the by line, in which I (Bakky) flicked it on and Lloyd who comfortably controlled it and danced around one defender to slip it through the keepers legs, great finish Lloyd 1 - 1. Our second goal came again from the right once again with a good cross coming from Heath the ball had a few attackers on it but was headed out from the Eastbourne centre back, the ball dropped to me (Bakky) where I was sitting around 16yrds on the angle I hit it on the half volleyed and it flew into the side netting of the far post, again good build up play from us down the right (paddy, heath). The third goal came from a loose ball which was bobbling around just outside the 6yrd box, and Carrick did a great job getting to the ball first and sneaking it passed the keeper. Good finish to some good build up! We controlled the game well but let our self down in finishing, the score could have been a lot more at the half; it wasn’t really till the last 20mins of the first half that we started to dominate. The second half started and that’s when the niggling started all over the pitch.  Paddy got nuts twice I was told, Rauru took out a toddler, Bakky almost getting sent off and with all the name calling going on I thought I was back at pre school. There's not much I remember about the second half apart from the fourth goal of the game from a break in play, there was a high ball in which I (Bakky), out jumped a little boy who kept calling me fat, The ball dropped to Lloyd who chipped the keeper from about 12yrds on the angle, very good quality goal.

Eds note:  Bakky obviously Pony despite scoring one and getting two assists.  Bringing the Stallions name into disrepute hasn't been used in a while but this was worthy.  Never heard so much moaning and decent to a ref, and this is from the King Albatross himself!
Stallion was Lloyd for scoring a double and an all round bull-busting game (is 'bull-busting' even a thing?)