Channel 4 presents THE RACE TO THE WORLD CUP - World Cup 94, seventh qualifier game
SAINT ELEANOR 2-3 CANADIAN DOMINION (Steve Pilchard 23 and 58; Cohen Aceron 30, Donovan Lane 66, Ryan Hamilton 79)
Report by Candy Hewitt, Channel 4 football analyst: 38-year-old Ryan Hamilton helped the Canadian Dominion secure a famous win at Saint Eleanor - their first win of any description in World Cup qualification for eighteen months - in a match with almost as much tension as heroics. The Ganders refused to pull any punches from the minute the starting pistol fired: Cohen Aceron's dragged shot was not the outcome his good management of a bouncing pass deserved.
Any hope Saint Eleanor had of trying to make their mark on the game early was punctated by a sense of paucity and lack of ambition; Bridget Coombe was skilful and stylish as she always is and David Newcastle had a couple of excellent line breaks, but cause for hope beyond that was scant at best. To those who knew no better, Steve Pilchard's perfect connection to one of the resulting, low Newcastle crosses was the expected outcome - a group of world-class footballers hard at work against much weaker opposition. To those who did, it came almost as a shock.
Aceron's subsequent equaliser, a standard-issue piledriver of the kind you'd expect to score in a video game, came just over five minutes later, although it felt more like a few seconds. That, if anything, was the impetus that made Saint Eleanor realise they had to get moving. Yes, the visitors had their chances to edge into the lead - but those chances were outnumbered by the hosts. Rick Goldsmith had two promising moves cancelled by offside. Jax Smith was booked just before half-time for tripping him as close to the box as you can get without it being a penalty - and Coombe's resultant, ill-fated free kick would have been a goal nine out of ten times. In the end, it was Pilchard who got the glory, pouncing onto a stray ball and boshing his effort where Tristan Clarke could not reach.
All well and good so far - but Donovan Lane, of all people, must be the man of the match despite featuring for merely half an hour after Pilchard struck again. First he made a near-instant impression, capping off an excellent solo run from distance with a curled shot to equalise, the kind of opportunity that the defence would never have allowed past them on a better day. Not even ten minutes after that, much to the chagrin of most fans, he successfully baited Esther Launceston into taking him down on the ball in the area, a good enough opportunity to warrant her removal from the match. The penalty, Sebastian Colt's responsibility, was saved - but not to fret, for them at least.
For in the end, it was he again who set up Ryan Hamilton with an almost taunting backheel. A man without the newcomer's steel would have skied the shot, but Hamilton kept the ball under control, floated a chip in the top corner and put the guests in the lead for the first time. It is a credit to them that they remained calm, wanted what would have been an astonishing fourth goal more and kept their focus. It is a disgrace to Lydia Nicholls in particular that she took the time to go studs-up on fellow substitute Andre Roth, then poke him in the ribs and try and start an argument when he got up; she was incredibly fortunate not to have been Saint Eleanor's second dismissal of the final fifteen minutes.
This failure is not final, nor is it fatal. Failure when visiting Brenecia might well be: it is arguably Saint Eleanor's hardest match of the entire twenty-game schedule, not made easier either by the team's failure to win either of its past three games or Launceston's suspension. Early rumours would suggest that Denise Livingston, younger by five weeks and much less tested on the international stage, will take the field at the Crown Row. Beyond her, Saint Eleanor will need their best players on the pitch, and perhaps even on their best form, if they are to start the job of redemption. And if they are to carry on, they will need to avoid falling into the most basic traps as they have done the past two qualifiers, having been sunk by subs Barrington and now Lane in relatively quick succession. It'll be a hard job, alright.
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Thirty Years of Eleanorians - 1981: "I still haven't paid a traffic fine from five years ago"
Published by Clara Morwood on February 18th 2005
Unlike in most other places, it would be safe to assume that most of the student body at the University isn't there to party. Shane Carrick, however, tried his very best. "Most people say your first year at Uni is easier than your last year at school but it wasn't like that for me. Economics was a new subject for me, I had to struggle to get my head around the matrices and advanced differentiation and that rubbish and by the time the summer term was rolling about, I decided eh, my friend's told me about the Karodin Tetrarchy, maybe I should try and go there."
A visit to the Tetrarchy would be quite a world away from drinking the bars dry in Collegiate district, not least because it wasn't easily accessible. "Whoever said it was a good idea to go there, though, was probably fobbing us off a bit. You either get there by driving, which you can't do outside the continent, or by getting a boat. I had a mate who just got a really small yacht called Freebird in the civilian docks at New Bayside so I asked him, he said yeah, I'll stock it with enough food for a week and believe it or not, that is how long we spent there."
The experience on the boat, by his own admission, was not pleasant. "It lasted as long as we hoped and no better. So it was just Harry and Jack and Dappy and I stuck on a boat for a week trying to steer it into the docks, trying not to think about how we'd dispose of everything and barely surviving off whatever hellish rice, beans and other items we'd barely eat otherwise were available. Which is saying something given that the Uni has quite a few people who might as well have a PhD in eating terrible home-cooked food."
Freebird dropped anchor in the Tetrarchy as scheduled, but found it worse than they thought. "It was almost immediately boring, which was something we hadn't accounted for. We were told there was this celebration of a goddess lady in Porzhibihan, the capital and the place we were staying at, but we stayed there for a few minutes, decided we didn't get what it was about, couldn't even understand the half of it and left. Other than that, barely anything to go about."
Possibly the only other highlight of their nightmare holiday was a visit to a local's house to drink mead. "We were told there was some being sold but there weren't any pubs in the country - I still can't believe it - so we had to ask around. We knocked on a random couple of front doors in the town, had a natter and eventually bumped into one lady who was doing it. Jack had a bit but he thought it was crap, I took his word for it and - well, I still can't believe she let us stay over for the night."
Day two was to be their big escape, or at least its opening chapter. Disappointed and with no return tickets of any description booked, Carrick was instrumental in helping his friends commandeer a stray carriage and its horses near the town centre. "Whoever that was even left the whip behind - what were they thinking, honestly? I told my mates to get in, got in the front and whipped the horses. They weren't too happy at first and required some orientation, but I'd say I was able to lead them out of the town going east towards Mertagne within thirty minutes."
Due to time and distance constraints, however, they had to stop just short of the border - and it was there, on the third day, that the fun really began. "At 7am sharp, we bolted to the Mertagnian border about half a mile off and waited. The border control guy said we needed a multiboard or we'd get a fine but I just said okay and ran off. I don't know what I was thinking when I said that but a substantial penalty charge landed in my letterbox when I got back from my holiday, I've never paid and never saw the point in paying so I might as well be banned from that place for life."
From there, the roughly thirty miles to Blackave Airport was a comparative breeze. "This being the Tetrarchy's border with Mertagne, most of the people on the roads either didn't complain or looked at us a bit funny, although not enough to make a difference. Obviously we stopped on the side of the road by the emergency phones for a bit a couple of times, but as we were approaching Blackave, I could definitely sense a change in attitude; you see, these people have proper cars, they're fed up with us and how slow we're going and maybe even how we're using the hard shoulder. No comment, though, mate."
By the early afternoon, Carrick and his friends arrived at the airport, but quickly dismounted. "I could tell that the staff waiting at the entrance really weren't happy with us trying to bring a literal coach and horses into the short-stay dropoff so I left everything behind, told them to get out, we all ran and booked our tickets back to Saint Eleanor for that night pretty sharp. It's not like we had any luggage or anything, but we were able to get our money exchanged into ducats, order the tickets, get some coffee and jump in the queue right on time. I regret a lot of things about my weekend out but I have no regrets about that bit."
Carrick's girlfriend, accounting and finance student Emma, was not happy about his escapades. "She was absolutely livid. She got over to my front door a couple of days later after Jack told Academy, the newspaper, about what had happened and told me no, no, no, I'm the only person you're going on holiday with from now on. She's sweet - she genuinely is - so I thought I'd bite the bullet, do everything short of apologise for my little group tour to the Tetrarchy and relax." The University announced an investigation into the incident after Academy's report, "but thank goodness it had no fanfare around it at all because they dropped it quite sharpish."
Having completed his Master's degree in 2003, Carrick now helps his home district council in Williamstown model financial outcomes and advise them on funding decisions. He's still with Emma and plans to marry her this autumn, and adds that while he's kept his promise not to go on wildcat holidays, "I still keep in touch with the three lads from those outrageous two weeks out. Mostly they've gone on and done perfectly normal things like I have, but I think all of them have had their own, hopefully happier, takeaways about that time we travelled all that distance for nothing. Really; that's what happened."
Nevertheless, allegations, none of them proven, have been made about Carrick and his friends' means of transport. Free Bird was allegedly left to rot in a Karodinian dock or destroyed by the locals, depending on who you ask; the horses at Blackave Airport gunned down by locals or airport staff, or perhaps made to roam free in local fields; their carriage either reclaimed by airport authorities, impounded by the highway police, left in museum storage, even - if recent rumours are to be believed - spray-painted blue by Independence 1975 fans in the local area. "Do you think anyone in Blackave cares about Saint Eleanor other than what happened to us? Really, these rumours are rumours, nothing more. I have no idea what's happened with any of those things, I think the mystique's better that way and I'd rather talk about how I'm living my life right now. But since you asked earlier, why not?"
