17 March 2013

Leyton Orient 4 Carlisle United 1, 16/3/13

A game in which... Orient found victory so easy that by the time they were 3-0 up they began nonchalantly caressing the ball around like they'd suddenly been possessed by the spirits of the current Barcelona squad. Inevitably about six seconds later this hugely inappropriate showboating led directly to a Carlisle goal, demonstrating the reality that Orient have more in common with Lionel Blair than Lionel Messi.

Still, let that not detract from the fact that this is a team in a rich vein of form, one that will almost certainly lead to them losing 4-0 to already-relegated Oldham on the final day of the season when a draw would have been enough to see them into the play-offs. Bring it on!

Moment of magic... What a great moment it was to see David Mooney - just seconds after coming on as a substitute - embark on a rampage towards goal that was so determined and dexterous it was like watching a canny Irishman weaving in the direction of the bar for last orders in a rammed Kilburn pub. If they'd been present, Sean Thornton and JJ Melligan would have looked on approvingly - assuming they could still see straight after 29 pints of Guinness, that is.

Moment of madness... When the unfortunate Scott Cuthbert was hit plum in the, well, plums yet managed to stay defiantly on his feet until the ball had gone out of play. We've always suspected the Scottish defender possessed balls of steel. Turns out he quite literally has.

Romain Vincelot swapped this for
Leyton High Road
Knight in shining armour... Amara Simba, Jonathan Tehoue, Mathieu Baudry... The list of great French players to wear the Orient shirt, well, stops there... Or does it, for on today's performance Orient fans could soon be singing the name of Romain Vincelot, if only they knew how to pronounce it. The former Brighton man played with inexplicable joie de vivre considering he's swapped cafe au laits on the Champs-Elysees for the vomit-splattered streets of Leyton. Vive la difference! 

Pantomime horse... No bad performances from anyone in an Orient shirt today, so let's instead take a moment to ridicule Carlisle's back-up keeper Adam Collin, whose first action of the game was to pick Kevin Lisbie's penalty out of the net. He followed that by almost slicing the ball into his own goal, then did exactly the same thing again seconds later as if he was participating in an exercise at the Glenn Morris School of Kicking for Keepers. He did pull off a blinding save from Lee Cook, mind.

In the dugout... "It's been a perfect week," said Russell Slade after the match, presumably forgetting the fact that in between Orient's three victories he'd lost two games of Monopoly at Kevin Dearden's legendary "Burgers, Beer, Board Games and Burgers" night in at his gaff. Fair play to the manager, though, for he's managed to get his team ticking at the business end of the season. God knows, if he actually figures out how to win a game before October one season we might actually get promoted.

Meanwhile on Twitter... A picture is worth a thousands words, but in the case of this photo of Dean Cox kindly tweeted by Adam Meagher, all those thousand words are 'WHY?'.

Statto corner... Kevin Lisbie's 13th league goal puts him in equal sixth place in the division's top scorers table. The last time an Orient player actually topped the chart was in the 1966/67 season when centre half Anthony Alan Ackerman took the number one spot before a ball was even kicked, simply by virtue of his alphabetically convenient name.
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