Fight Club

For more than a decade, Carperby have had the better team and have regularly won by margins of four or fives goals.

Indeed, I cannot remember a game in recent history when we have taken points off them. As the goals have gone in, we have got more and more frustrated and have taken to kicking and scything down their players, which has led to punch-ups.

The animosity only increased a few years ago when our captain left to join them, despite his younger brothers still playing for us.

However, the times they are changing in the Wensleydale Creamery League. Every dog has its day and the aging Carperby labradror is shows signs of characteristic hip problems.

We took it as an omen that the wind was blowing from east to west on Saturday afternoon at our Mill Lane ground. Never before had this been known.

Our pre-match routine, never the most professional, consisted of a few games of piggy-in-the-middle. Some of the younger lads spent the remaining few minutes attaching a print-out of a Carperby midfielder's www.match.com profile onto the cross bar which they had stumbled across the night before. While internet dating is becoming increasingly acceptable elsewhere, you are opening yourself up to a whole world of pain if you sign up in the Dales. The player in question didn't turn up. Probably a good thing.

The first half was very tight. Nobody scored and there were few chances. After 15 minutes of the second half we got a corner. The keeper flapped and missed, and the ball fell at my feet about five yards out. I hit it as hard as I could and it blasted past the melee of players into the roof of the net. 1-0.

Five minutes later our big center forward chipped the keeper for our second. They quickly pulled one back, but our left-winger scored a beauty from a tight angle quickly after the restart.

They then pulled two pack - one a header from a corner and their third, a long range effort that wrong-footed our keeper. But we kept pushing forward and Bruce, the left-winger, got his second, putting it through the keeper's legs to make it 4-3.

Although we have made great strides in the last couple of seasons, we would not be Redmire if we didn't have a wobble in the last five. And after a scramble in our box, they equalised to make it 4-4.

They then nearly snatched it injury time. Another melee in the penalty box that resembled that Carling advert when they play in the street and the ball falls to the fat, semi-naked fella. But while he finished with aplomb (thesaurus says 'composure'), their player scuffed it.

The ball went towards our net and seemed to spend an age on the line before being cleared. Many players and spectators from both sides said afterwards they saw the net move just below the crossbar. Personally I think it was the strange easterly wind.

Whatever actually happened, the ref didn't give it. The final whistle blew and it ended 4-4. I slumped to the floor knackered but smiling like a dog with two, er, bones.