Suspense was in the air. It was the first game of the season for Södermalm against reigning champions Solna Axemen. The Blues had lost a few key players from last year and no one knew if the new recruits would be able to fill their shoes. The crowd was anxious and the players nervous. Fortunately one guy was calm as cucumber; coach Paul Stephens. He had a simple enough game plan for the boys to understand. “We’re gonna play 9 vs. 2! If we play as a team there will be 9 good Söder players out there against Solna’s two good players” A stroke of genius from the new coach, 9 players should beat 2 players. But that wasn’t enough; “I want two guys tagging these players and if we take care of one, they can’t pass to each other” The boys were stunned by the simplicity, 9 players will always beat 0 players.

[simple-flickr user=”sodermalmafc” set_id=”72157626674555422″ width=”550″ height=”366″]
(Photos by Jordo)

From the start of the 1st quarter the players showed that they knew what was needed to pull this off; hard tackles, lots of voices, lots of running and second efforts. Working as a team paid off and Söder went into the 1st break with a 22 point lead.

Before the 2nd quarter Paul urged the guys to continue with the hard work and don’t let Solna into the game. In his eagerness to pick up the mike Brissles started running commentary by himself from the sideline; “Playing as a team is good and all but even a good team needs some key players. Who’s gonna fill Wolfman’s shoes in the ruck now that he’s gone? If you play iGuts as full back, who’s gonna pick up the ball in then centre and move it up to the forwards? With Perezmo setting up franchises in Shanghai, who’s gonna tackle Jake?” The answer to those questions was one and the same: Kungen. With Jake taken care of, Ivan made sure Adrian didn’t get a sniff. At half time Söder was up by 7 goals.

In the 3rd quarter when Solna was flooding the goal square Chris Angus came up with a workaround solution. “I’ve been watching a lot of Swedish soccer from the fifties so I did what Gunnar Nordahl used to do. Run in with the ball along the side line and kick goals on a tiny angle. I probably couldn’t kick it if I was straight in front of goal…” Former coach Jordo couldn’t hide his enthusiasm “That magic boot of his is the best thing to come out of Victoria since the M31 to Sydney!”

Going in to the 4th quarter Söder had a healthy 6 goal lead which may put some people at ease. But not Paul, he did not want a repeat of last year’s first game, also against Solna. Then, Söder was in the lead from the start only to watch Solna get in front after a few late goals in that long last quarter. “Let’s go out there and make a statement!” And so they did. Junior picked up the ball in the back pocket and ran all the way to the forward pocket. Hand balling to himself, doing pirouettes and all the time shepherded by Ivan. “Ah man, they’re doing the choreography to Swan Lake” shouted Lethal from the bench. “I know that cause I….never did ballet myself!”

sodermalmafc.se was lucky enough to get a word with coach Paul after the game: “I studied Jordo’s coaching last year to see if there was any area where I could bring in something new, something the other teams knew nothing about. Through special channels I managed to get hold of his school records and it was evident that one area where the young scholar didn’t excel was mathematics. So that was how I knew how beat Solna, simple mathematics.”