MALLORCA “WIN UGLY”

AFTER a weekend when I was asked "What’s 3 inches long and never gets used ?" – the key to Arsenal’s trophy cabinet! – Real Mallorca finally overcame a 10-man Castilla side to win 1-2 at the Alfredo de Stefano stadium on Sunday night. It was heart-stopping stuff for Mallorca’s fans as we looked dead and buried until the last ten minutes. Talk about a grand stand finish, I had to go for a lie down in a darkened room after the final whistle went, then had to watch probably the best ever "El clásico."

A 92nd minute penalty save by the islanders’ goalkeeper Ruben Miño (his fourth of the season) made sure of all three points, giving the visitors their first back-to-back win since January. Miño has now become a vital cog in our promotion play off push.

In what was always going to be a physical encounter, the first half was full of crunching tackles from both sides. Then in the 15th minute Castilla’s star player Willian Jose saw red after a trailing arm drew blood from Mallorca’s centre back Agus’s nose. The foul looked unintentional but the referee didn’t hesitate to pull out a red card and it was an early bath for the Brazilian wonder kid. As usually happens with Real Mallorca, we made heavy weather of the circumstances, failing to make our numerical advantage count. Indeed, as half time arrived Castilla, minus a player, won the possession count.

After the interval Mallorca looked well off the pace. We gave the ball away too often and had no spark or play-maker on the pitch. It was no surprise when Castilla hit us with the counter-attack sucker punch in the 58th minute. A shot from Aguza came back off the post and Lucas was quickest to react to put Castilla ahead 1-0.

Mallorca just couldn’t make any impression on the home defence, although an out-of-sorts Gerard had the ball in the net, he was adjudged marginally offside. Our coach, Carreras, made a couple of attacking changes bringing on Hemed and Geijo for Riverola and Alfaro. The changes paid off in the 83rd minute, when after a goalmouth scramble Hemed poked in the equaliser. It was the Israeli international’s first goal since he scored against Betis last May and his delight at getting back on the scoresheet was incalculable. He’s been out for ten months with an Achilles tendon injury. 1-1.

Time was running out as Mallorca mustered one last attack and after a corner kick, the ball broke to Thomas and he curled in a wonder goal from the edge of the area in the 88th minute. That was his third goal in three games as somehow Mallorca had taken the lead. The fourth official put up the time-added-on board – three minutes. With only one of the three minutes left to play, Kevin had an innocuous challenge on Lucas, he went down theatrically and the referee pointed to the spot. Disaster for Real Mallorca – or so we thought. Up stepped Mascarell and his effort was brilliantly parried away by Miño – a defining moment without a doubt as we held on for a famous, if fortuitous, win 1-2.

Summing up:

For long periods of this game, Mallorca were all over the place as the skilful Castilla kids gave us the run-around. There’s a saying in football that if you win a game without grace or panache, then you win ugly – we most certainly did that on Sunday night.

This game was littered with fouls and there’s no question we got out of jail – big time – but Mallorca won, and that’s all that matters. Now we’re only one point off the play off positions on 43 points with a home game against Rec. Huelva next SATURDAY at 6.15p.m.m. Can we go for a hat trick of wins ? Let’s hope so, as three more golden points would go a long way to ease the swathe of hell-forsaken glumness amongst the Son Moix faithful at present. For the Recreativo game, Alex Moreno must be brought back into the squad. He’s been one of our few successes this season and for some reason appears to have dropped off the coach’s radar. Shock leaders Eibar won again on Sunday and are now way ahead of us on 54 points. Deportivo are second on 53 points. Both these sides have a goals against tally of 23 (ours is 45!) hence the reason they’re both looking promotion favourites with just 11 games left to play.

And finally,

The Irish Bingo Card.

A young girl from Donegal leaves home to find work in the bright lights of London. After six months, she comes home, steps out of the taxi and she’s wearing a full-length mink coat. "Begorrah, Colleen," says her mother, "Tis a lovely soft coat yer wearin’ an’ it looks so expensive, where did ye get that ?" Colleen tells her "Sure now, I won it at the bingo, don’t they have wonderful prizes in London?"

When the weekend’s over, Colleen goes back to the bright lights but she’s back in Donegal a few months later. This time she’s wearing a top-of-the-range gold watch and a huge diamond-encrusted ring. Again she tells her mother she won them at bingo, then returns to London.

A few months later, she’s back sporting a beautiful emerald necklace with matching bracelet and earrings. She hands her mother 1,000 euros explaining she’d won it all at bingo, then asks her mother to run her a bath as she needs to freshen up. Her mother runs the bath, but when Colleen comes to climb in, there’s only a quarter inch of hot water in it. Miffed that after giving her mother a "grand," she’d been really mean with the water, she shouts downstairs.

"Mum, sure now didn’t I ask you to run a bath but there’s only a quarter of an inch of water in the tub!" Her mum replies, "Indade there is, me darlen, but we don’t want ye getting’ yer bingo card wet now, do we?"