K’s Win...but does Matt Damon?
With four trips to Earlsmead on offer before mid-October, Jamie Cutteridge and Taimour Lay skipped the second round of the Alan Turvey Trophy, formerly known as the Isthmian League Cup, sponsored by Robert Dyas, in favour of Matt Damon's latest film. Here's their report:
A depleted, desolate landscape with little or no atmosphere, a desperate search for fellow humans in a hostile environment, a rising panic of lonely despair and a slow wait for death. But enough about a trip to Hendon for the Alan Turvey non-memorial-mega-trophy. Let's talk about The Martian, Matt Damon's Robinson-Crusoe-set-in-space-castaway epic at all good cinemas nationwide.
As we settled in our plush seats at 7.30 on Tuesday night, we smugly congratulated ourselves for finally choosing life over K's. Yes, this is what ordinary people do on a weeknight. They go to the pictures. They interact socially. They embrace The Greatest City in the World. They don't go to Earlsmead. We don't need to go to every single game. We can be whoever we want to be. Maybe we'll take up a new hobby. We'll go to galleries. We'll learn a language.Tuesday night can be salsa night.
A panoramic shot of a Martian horizon! An explosion! Matt Damon making wisecracks! A beautiful actress forced to wear glasses because she's playing a NASA geek! Jeff Daniels! And this was cheaper than non-league football! Indeed, we had chosen well. This was OK. This was normal. This was the future. Pass me the popcorn and the pension plan, I'm ready for the real world.
But slowly, surely, sadly, our hearts and minds were drawn to North-West London. A quick glance at the phone couldn't hurt, could it? Is Inns back from injury? Which of our nine left-backs will play right-back? Could Butterworth make the bench?
Just as Jessica Chastain's face fell when she realised her crew had left Damon behind to almost certain doom, by the time Kempo and Pico were on the scoresheet in a thrilling 2-2 draw, we realised we'd made a terrible mistake.
Was it too late? As Matt Damon once famously said, we had to science the s☆☆t out of this. We began to do the math[s]. Could we sling-shot around South London to make it in time for penalties or would the gravitational pull of the new Noodle Stand throw us six light-years off-course? Would Ali be able to come back for us using a Chinese fuel source? Could the fecal matter on the Earlsmead pitch be used to grow potatoes? How long would you be able to survive locked in Kingsmeadow with only the Chelsea youth team’s rations to survive on? The Martian began to ask the questions we hadn’t even began to consider.
No, we were stuck. We had to admit defeat. We weren't astronauts. We had to rely on the internet.
Matt Damon constructed a primitive communication device using hexadecimals and a Pathfinder camera. "I've got it!" cried Jamie. "Football Web Pages!"
Gary Ekins' website slowly loaded an oversized advert for a dating agency. Finally, our fickle mistress spoke. “Full-time”. Extra-time? Tell us things! “Penalties have begun.” What?! Penalties! Who's up first?! Agonising minutes passed. The equivalent of 0.12 Solar Hours. “Penalties have finished”. Guh? Who won?!
We desperately searched twitter, whispering urgently as irate Damon fans cast us evil looks. Surely Robert was there? Ali? Si Bell? Someone? We were truly alone, isolated from Planet Ks, from everything that really mattered. We were Matt Damon. We were Martians.
On the big screen, Damon propelled himself through space towards Chastain's outstretched hand. Go on, Matt! Suddenly a phone flickered. “Kingstonian win 3-1 on penalties". Yes! The popcorn flew through the air, each white kernel-puff tracing an orbit across the dark expanse of the Genesis cinema. "Crowd: 83." We're never missing K's again.
Match report by Taimour Lay.
