There aren’t too many action shots, decent or otherwise, of me playing footy. So I was plenty surprised and pleased to find that the co-ed beer league posted some photos of a goal I scored last weekend. The lighting on the pitch was fine, but the pictures turned out kinda dark. The sequence:

We were up 2-0. Our goalie made a save, ran to the top of the box and threw the ball towards me at midfield. Either the wind caught it or I misjudged its flight, because I got twisted around and the ball hit me (#76 in white) in the back of the neck. I spun around, got control of it at the midfield stripe and started dribbling inside…

I got around one defender (dark green #12) and tried to cut inside, but he was trying to force me off to my left. Another defender (dark green #15) came rushing in from my right. #12 must’ve sensed his buddy coming and thought #15’d take care of it, so he eased up a little bit. At that point I cut hard to the right between them…

#12 sped by, #15 got spun around, and the keeper came at me. I toe-poked it, nutmegged him, and watched it roll into the net.

Fireworks, military flyover, Brazilian supermodels in sequined bikinis tossing rose petals, etc. As I walked back to midfield for the kickoff, the ref (lime green in the first photo) said something like, “That was a TV highlight.” I slugged him in the jaw, knocked him to the ground, screamed “DON’T RUIN MY MOMENT!” and took his wallet. Then I kicked him. At least that’s how I remember it. We went on to win, 5-0.

…

Very rarely does a play work out exactly the way you hope it will. This one did, with an awful lot of luck. I’m just glad someone got most of it on camera.