At the top of the tree are teams like Barcelona. Further down the pyramid are teams like El Padro. Standard Athletic are a little lower still, at least for the moment. El Padro are sponsored by a tapas bar of that name and have a backbone of Spanish players. They play in the Tankards League and and we have a couple of games lined up against some it's other pub teams. Gulp.
SAFC had some good spells of play and we held onto the ball successfully at times. Our defence was well organised and mostly held firm. But each time El Padro came at us they were able to create a goal-scoring opportunity. And they mostly went in. Your correspondent was well-placed to keep score, though I was getting damn close to running out of fingers. I counted them all in...
The positives include the fact that there was a lot of tireless running, even when the result was already sealed and the carrots were well-cooked. Some good interplay in midfield and general solidity in the backline. We won many balls in the air from clearances, which is a significant improvement from earlier in the season. But we didn't have enough of the ball up the field to create many chances to score.
Hopefully we can invite El Padro back again and give them a closer game. Failing that, we'll go round to their bar and drink them under the table.