Ian Ochiltree
Well, five brave and bold representatives of the Trust made their way to Northampton early on the morning of Sunday 20th January to represent LOFT in the Northampton Town Supporters' Trust 10th Anniversary Five-a-Side tournament.

 It was immediately obvious that we weren't well prepared. The goalkeeper was ashen-faced and riddled with nerves, the youngest - and therefore fittest - player was still posting drunken messages on the Message Board at 3.45am, and our best player was fast asleep besides his girlfriend in Walthamstow when we kicked off at 10.50.

We feared a humiliating experience, especially when we saw the other teams - young, fit not fat, and dressed in matching kit.

First up was the Northampton Town Trust. Despite the fact that most of us had not kicked a ball in anger for a very long time - and hadn't run anywhere for even longer - we put up a creditable showing I think. 0-0 at half-time with Doug - don't call me Lola, call me "The Cat" - Harper producing a string of excellent saves, we were finally beaten 1-0 with a goal two minutes from time.

All too quickly we were back on the pitch, this time against a side from the Northampton Town Supporters Club. Once again, our John Jackson look-alike keeper threw himself around his goalmouth, but this time we'd added a new tactic. Drawing on all that he'd learnt from Tommy Taylor and Tony Adams, David Prowse won a series of free-kicks from the opposition, marching up the pitch 10 yards at a time like a demented American footballer in search of the next first-down, before appealing, Tony Adams-like, for the next free kick. The rest of us just stood back and let him get on with it. His purple patch culminated in the ruthless despatch of not one but two penalty kicks as The Cobblers buckled before his onslaught. 2-0 to us.

In the other group, the Bristol Rovers Trust were looking a lot like the team that visited Brisbane Road and not at all like the team that hosted us on Boxing Day. Their misery peaked in their second game when their keeper threw the ball into his own net and let another rebound cannon off the back of his head into his own goal. Oh well.

But let's not give the impression that this was not a serious, high-quality affair. Oh no. Our third game saw us take on the Coventry Trust, runaway leaders of Group Two. IT was another backs-to-the wall performance from us, and, alarmingly, a bit of a hands-on-knees and heads-between-the legs game too. Fitness was beginning to tell, it seemed. But they couldn't score in the first half, and we even managed to miss a couple of chances on our rare excursions beyond the halfway line. Suddenly qualification for the semi-finals was looking like a horrible possibility. Coventry weren't happy. There was talk that they might set up an alternative competition for themselves and Birmingham if they didn't win their group this time, but in the end they sneaked the lead in the dying minutes after resorting to a more physical game. We threw our considerable weight around, but to no great purpose. Mark Lunn attempted a typically Orient walk-the-ball-into-the-net attack when a simple shot would have sufficed, and from the rebound they broke away to steal a second, a task made simpler by Doug Harper's frank admission that "I was too knackered to save it." "But he was the keeper!", I hear you cry, "He shouldn't have been knackered." But he was. A lot.

So we finished third in our group, with one win, two defeats and a most O's-like end-of-competition goal difference of -1. We'd expected thrashings, but it didn't really happen. We could still have qualified for the semi-finals if the Northampton Supporters Club had won their last match, but at least three of our players were seen cheering their opposition on. Coventry went on to win the trophy, I think, and had the dubious honour of collecting their prize from Graham Kelly. And we pushed them as hard as anyone.

But in the end, it all came down to fitness. We didn't have any. Nor did we have any skill, ability, substitutes, finesse, tactics or supporters. But we did have fun. And we were the first in the bar.

Thanks to the 'Ear for the shirts, thanks to Northampton for organising it.