If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other report. In this report, there is only a slim chance of a happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the season of 2015 for first team Captain Brian Roper. Brian Roper was an intelligent footballer, and he was athletic, and resourceful, and strong, and had very broad shoulders and not unpleasant facial features, but he was extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to him was rife with misfortune, misery and despair. I’m sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.

So I totally plagiarised the first paragraph from a book and edited it to suit my needs, a free drink to the first person who can tell me where I stole it from (comment on the report in the Facebook group). It’s not too far from the truth, though. Friday’s match against Mooroolbark started to put a bit of daylight between Marissa Preston at the top of the club goal scoring charts and last season’s MVP. After a wasteful start to the season that worryingly looked a lot like his first season at the club, Roper hit his straps as he once again looked down on the chasing pack, his face twisted into an amused grin at those who would attempt to topple the king from his throne.

However, the general disarray of the Bayside League competition conspired against him and, as we hit the halfway point of the season, which is somewhere around here, the first team have suffered no less than four fixture forfeits or postponements. As any goal scorer will know, when you are in a purple patch, you play as much as you can to keep the ball rolling, and Roper’s in so much purple at the moment he could over take George Takei as the leading gay rights activist (purple is the internationally recognised gay colour for those who are wondering). Not that I’m saying Roper is gay, he’s just an athletic guy, who has good hygiene…and dresses nicely…and likes to buy himself nice things… Anyway I heard he has a calendar at home that has naked ladies on it…oh, and a wife and kids. Then again, I’m fairly sure Elton John was married…and had kids…and Boronia’s very own Jiyah “Gay Dad” Cave has a daughter…

Moving on, the Maidens took on Mooroolbark on Friday night. It was cold, windy and as we assembled to watch the game you could almost taste the ice in the air. Surprisingly there was no Smithy, however we regrouped from the come down which was related to his absence, and drinking the free beer supplied by goalkeeper come keg master Jeff Howard, we did what a drunk Boronia crowd does best: we heckled our own players and talked so much offensive and politically incorrect bollocks that Karl stopped recording the match deeming the footage unusable.

Relatively happy with wasting his time, we turned our attention to the match just in time to see Marissa Preston put the girls 1-0 up with a stunning twenty yard strike. Not to be outdone, Mooroolbark launched a series of counter attacks and at one point looked like they might actually make it out of their own half, golf claps all round. Within minutes however, the status quo was restored and the Maidens once again commenced an onslaught on the Mooroolbark goal. Despite the pressure, they were unable to break them down, and the teams went in at half time with the score line finely poised at 1-0.

We locked Jeff, aka El Hefè, ( which I’m sure is the Mexican equivalent of “the Jeff”) in the boot at halftime to protect him from the cold. He managed to secure his release just as halftime started when he reminded us that he had the keys to the beer. The second half seemed suspiciously short, not at all surprising given the arctic conditions, and as we huddled together, six grown men sharing body heat, Masa Mihaljcic pounced on a loose ball in the box to make it 2-0, Mikaela made it 3-0 shortly after and with Mooroolbark offering no chance of a fightback, the referee brought the freezing affair to an end and “the barkers” headed back up Dorset Rd with no points and possibly, hopefully, frostbite.

What should’ve been a great day to watch football on Sunday had turned sour on Thursday night, when the club was informed that Dandenong City would be forfeiting their cup match against the first team, due to a wedding that the majority of their players would be attending. Now, I’m a bit of a prick, and I have no problems making outlandish assumptions, but even with all that considered I find it hard to believe that the Dandenong players, coaching staff and club officials only received their invitations to the wedding on Thursday and therefore had no possible way to inform us earlier of the possibility of a forfeited match, or rearrangement of the fixture. I mean I’m sure the very stern talking to they will receive from the Bayside League and the angry face emojis I assume they received in the email correspondence will cause them to feel bad about their actions. However what’s more likely is that they, like just about everyone else in this league apparently, are viewing the Bayside League for what it is: an increasingly pathetic joke of a league that can’t fill a division with teams and can’t put team names into a fixture generator.

So onto Sunday, where the veterans took on a team that unceremoniously dismantled them and proceeded to take the piss for seventy minutes of the match. I think the final score was 5-0 but the game itself was more akin to a game of FIFA on easy mode.

The thirds travelled to Rosebud again, and emerged 3-0 victors, with goals to Callum Butler 1 and Dave Sidoway 2, and the reserves took on the ever hapless TOPSA, and my arch nemesis, Triangle Face. While technically his face is more of a prism due to it being three dimensional in shape, the name has stuck and I hate him with the passion of a hundred thousand suns. I have never played against him, but he is a clumsy, useless, arrogant centre back, who more likely than not will kick the player instead of the ball. He’s basically the TOPSA equivalent of me, however I have a face that is normal shaped and would look out of place in the text books of a year 8 geometry class, unlike his.

The match started as you’d expect a match against TOPSA would start; they were shite and the shower crew carved them up with surgical precision. Grant Bertrand and Jarrod White were first on the scoresheet, after some TOPSA defending that was reminiscent of France vs Germany in WW2. Leading the cowardly charge was Triangle Face, his misshapen head clearing balls to the feet of the Boronia players more often than to his own teammates. A mazy run from Cowan Waddingham and another striker’s finish from Grant made it 4-0 at the break.

As Cowan inexplicably drank water from a dog’s bowl, I spent half time trying to McGuyver a white flag for TOPSA, out of spoons and the excess hair that my dog had been moulting all over Brokeback Reserve, however my crocheting skills are not what they once were, forcing TOPSA to brace themselves for another half of playing drunk school girl to Stephen Milne, and I mean the St Kilda player, not our own resident Stephen Milne.

The first goal in the second half was as hilarious as it was inept. Collecting the ball at the edge of the box, Mattieu Toomer-Smith turned Triangle Face and sent a shot skidding across the ground into the arms of the TOPSA keeper, who promptly decided to throw the ball into his own net. Tristan White added a sixth from a corner, and Cam Janky rifled the ball into the back of the net from the corner of the box to make it 7-0, all in the space of four second half minutes. TOPSA managed to claw one back, however a double to Jarrod and a late finish to Grant, sealed both their hattricks, and the first time the reserves have hit double figures this season. Final score 10-1.

Food of the day: None. The dim sim steamer broke, so nobody got to eat.

Beer of the day: Atomic Pale Ale. It was cheap so I bought it, it’s not bad. If you like Budweiser you’ll like this because just like Budweiser, it tastes like a watered down version of a better beer.

If you have a positive or negative response or just generally feel like disagreeing, I can be contacted at bscmatchreports@gmail.com