Mi Phone's late leveler rescues Oldtime at Duckcrate

Robert Crowther Mar 2023
image of cheap_goals
''We let in cheap goals', said Duckcrate manager Ivor Wright

Heroes are people who pretend to go it alone, then luck out by looking good. Since returning to the Landgrab Stadium Mi Phone has been a nobody, we didn’t recognise the name, but he came off the bench to score a goal that briefly put Oldtime ahead in this match, and drew the result, which rockets them to 15th, soaring two points above the relegation zone. Turns out, before being recalled a couple of months ago, Phone had scored seven goals in 14 starts on loan at some no‐name, low‐league, no‐hope, what’s‐the‐point club.

Given the dearth of firepower at Oldtime, recalling known ordnance made sense but, two months later, Phone had been limited to 10 minutes of football only, maybe due to the manager suspecting he was no better than a water‐pistol in a gunfight. His one start came away at Newport, when he was asked to play as substitute goalkeeper. Versatile he may be, willing also, but total football is not his style—maybe not football.

Here, replacing injured Khongordzol Ular after 79 minutes, the young lad showed what he can do with a ball at his feet, taking a short pass from Keola Mele before battering Emmett Cooldude aside as he cut infield to score his first goal for the club.

“He’s quick, he’s strong,” manager Callum Rampart said. “You have to spit dubbin, rub dubbin, spit again until it gleams.”

Last week our writers proposed Duckcrate could not score a goal if they had eleven players and an open goal. And how the squad could improve only if someone shouted at them, but how manager Ivor Wright was a craven appeaser. In this match Teifion Clyfar was, again, mesmerising, and in he and Handsome Gem Duckcrate have two players of uncanny poise. They’re always on the half‐turn, capable of delineating space where none seems to exist, and both blessed with an eye‐defying range of passing, like ballerinas on sparkle‐dust, but football was never won with a pirouette—it is a game of crunching force meeting crunching force.

Of course, we need a reason now for how Duckcrate managed to put three into the string bag. Easy to explain—a feature of Duckcrate is that they are extremely reliant on wing‐strikes for deep penetration. Duckcrate have won 42% of games this season when Hickory Powers and Endon Chitlow have played as opposed to 38.7% when they have not.

Chitlow was key to the opener, his attempt to square Gem’s sighing pass scuffed to Clyfar. Clyfar caught the ball with an elegant fouetté and the ball took three deflections, leaving Oldtime players strewn about it’s path. Clyfar ended with a port de bras—it makes you groan.

It was Powers who was vital to Duckcrate regaining their lead, tripped for a penalty that Harvard Biarritz converted.

Yet for Duckcrate, this was another game this season in which they swirled across the boards, had the bulk of chances and somehow failed to win—which shows we were right all down the line. There are times when Duckcrate seem devoted to their art, creating rapturous interlaces of passes that ended, 30 seconds or a minute after they begin, back where they started—except sometimes in the net.

In between, Oldtime equalised with a typical Rampart goal, Mele nutting Kana Volvakov’s head‐butt across goal following a corner. Then they equalized again after Khongordzol chicken‐winged Thunder Goldberg and in the resulting melee Ular bazookaed the loose ball. But this was about Phone, his first smack‐down. Even if Clyfar’s Arabesque tap‐in from Mohammed Stamp’s misplaced cross was elegant and salvaged a point ‘sur la pointe’ is not a football league position.