Match Report on Life and How to Live It (Long, pointless and in English)

On the journey out to Daugavpils (we took the scenic route by the meandering Daugava – lots of greenhouses – lots of trained tomatoes bulging in greenness – Did I tell you I built a greenhouse? Full of tomatoes now – I like it in there), any road, on the way there, I tried to get through some pages of ‘Impossible Exchange’ by this Frenchy, Jean Baudrillard. I suspect he is a tosser, but some lines were good enough to cause me to put the tome down, consider, and drift off into sleep. Essentially the first 29 pages seemed to be about that nagging feeling that whatever you do is in vain – the uncertainty that haunts our toil like anti-matter or dark matter or whatever it is that we can’t see – the uncertainty that what we do only has worth within its own construct, sphere or system, but outside of that it cannot be exchanged for anything – and reality is a ghost  - presumably an unimpressed one. 

It is something that must be immediately and deeply understood by managers of women football teams on  4–hour journeys to destinations in which almost inevitable defeat (slouched against stadium gates) awaits with a bored, disappointed sigh.

As it happened, we played in the main stadium in town ‘Celtnieku Stadions’. Scattered supporters on a mild summer Daugavpils Sunday dotted themselves around the ground, and polite and funny old Mistresses of the Changing Room Keys delighted in building slow and careful Latvian sentences. 

The first half saw us undone by youth well drilled. Their speed and balance orchestrated by hard-working instruction from their manager pushed us back: the bar was rattled three times to the low key ‘oohs’ from the friends and relatives. 

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Ervins, the young, serious scientist of the beautiful game asked if he should be honest. I said he should and he proceeded with withering diagnosis – the girls slouched in shade offered little resistance. I waited the appropriate period of time and played Good Cop by the book as well as I could: you are supposed to offer them hope in themselves – just as well the task is simple and structured and can be exchanged for a result: some points. Imagine that – act with character, take responsibility, don’t fall for cheap tricks, work until you are sick, try to do the right thing, and we could rise from the basement of the league.

Girls bust a lung, asked for responsibility, and took it (bodies angling for intelligent passes), chased lost causes, slid into tackles, hacked balls away, showed some spite in 50/50s, roused one another: you could hear character clear its throat to have its say on proceedings.

Full time 

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Someone bought a bottle of Champagne on the journey home. It was one of those really small bottles.