It was a subdued and depleted R Team that met up in the Strawberry yesterday, just Steph, Jon and Softie sporting Wimbledon-frowns and using lots of naughty sailor words whilst comparing notes about Saturday. Still, we had the stiffs to look forward to, and we wouldn’t lose a second time to their bunch of untried youngsters would we? Hmmm. Unfortunately most of our decent fringe players are nursing their grief in Spain with some relaxing golf in the sunshine, so the sort of team we watched last season was fielded against the Scousers. It took all of half a second to latch onto the name next to Liverpool’s Number 11 on the team sheet - Titi Camara&ldots;oops! They had one time Toon-target Brad Friedel in goal and Steve Staunton, Danny Murphy and Traore were the other familiar names and faces on the list Ours was not quite so well known: Karelse Arnison .............Howey...... Beharall .......Griffin Comineli ......Hamilton......... McClen.... Brady Robinson .........Maric The announcer stopped playing his naff records long enough to confirm the team selection and invite us to apply for tickets to the Mackem beambacks to SJP and the Arena. Rather unusually, Toon kicked off towards the Gallowgate (Airport) end and Robinson soon played a ball through for Maric to run onto. “Gosh,” we thought. “Tommy Craig is working them too hard, Maric has shrunk four inches and his hair has turned blonde.” Nice to see that the member of staff in the commentary box who is PAID to keep us informed still can’t tell Maric from Coppinger. No idea why the want-away Croatian International wasn’t playing, although I hope that common sense has intervened and he’s being paraded in front of European scouts in Spain rather than wandering about dispiritedly in front of Terry Mac, the only obvious scout at the game. The pitch was a bit slippery (Robinson swears by it) and the temperature was decidedly nippy. I even started on the Bovril before the match in the hope that it would inspire a couple of early goals - sadly, I made the basic mistake of failing to stipulate which side were to score them (after giving Ciara frequent lectures on this very subject during her stay, I am hanging my head in shame). The game started scrappily (no, really?) with both sides endeavouring to give the ball away as often as possible, although Liverpool were doing this through being caught offside whilst we did it through trying to be too clever by half (normal service has been resumed with Jamie McClen) or not clever at all (Super Des Hamilton). Camara was clearly a cut above everyone else on the park and showed the ability to create time and space in a game where everyone was pressing and closing down quickly, which is no mean feat. His wonderful awareness on the ball allowed him to turn the frenzy of our tacklers against them as he neatly sidestepped them and had the composure to ignore them once he was passed seemingly having eyes in the back of his head. His first breakaway goal was on the cards from early on as the reserves conspired to give an excellent impression of the First Team by playing the offside trap on the halfway line and discovering that Steve Howey is not very fast after all. Camara went one on one with Karelse (not a phrase to inspire confidence, eh readers?) and pulled out to the right before side-footing it home. It may have been scored by one of our opponents, but it is a welcome addition to the extremely slender pamphlet “Well Taken Goals Hit First Time at Kingston Park”. This seemed to galvanize NUFC to new levels of crapness. We countered this reverse by pumping high balls towards our forwards. This led to the ridiculous sight of Coppinger challenging Traore for these efforts. Traore sportingly kept his feet on the ground, but even so, Coppy had trouble getting above his navel. Traore could probably see the top of Duncan Ferguson’s head if he looked down, whilst Coppinger makes me feel like a man-mountain, which will come as a surprise to anyone who has inadvertently knocked me over while taking their coat off. Camara soon sprang the “least effective offside-trap in the World, ever” again and the embarrassed Howey lumbered after him and hacked him down at knee height from behind when it was clear that he couldn’t catch him. One of those hushes settled as everyone waited for the portly Mr Tiffin to do the obvious thing. Red card. No, I’m sure Howey is a true professional and not at all annoyed about being left behind when Dabizas and Marcelino are in Spain. I rather think a carpeting should be on the cards for the £18k per week, seldom out of the sick room, centre half. The free kick wasn’t much to write home about, but 10 men and a goal down against a useful side isn’t normally a recipe for success. Moments later, Comineli got hurt in a tackle on the far side from us and Tommy Craig used the opportunity to change things around. The Argentinian was subbed for one of the Caldwells (G, I think) and chose to walk around the entire perimeter of the pitch, muttering, sulking and occasionally limping - at least he wants to play. Oddly enough we became a far better team with 10 men. Perhaps not having a slow but imposing figure in the centre of defence made things a bit easier, as Griffin, Arnison, Beharral and Caldwell used their greater mobility to get up and down the field at an impressive rate. They’ll be shagged out for a week after the last hour. Coppinger and Robinson began to make more of a nuisance of themselves with support appearing with the ball at feet instead of through the air as we looked to maintain possession. It was around this time that Robinson gave us a first-hand account of the playing conditions when Arnison looked unimpressed at him for losing the ball. “I F*CKING SLIPPED!” Screamed the youngster to the delight and horror in equal measure of the little girl and her Mum stood alongside us. Unfortunately, in stark contrast to Camara, NUFC continued to add to Chapter 4 of Volume 28 of the encyclopaedia “Torturously Painful Build Up With Complete Inability to Put the Ball in the Net”. There were occasional flashes of brilliance; Arnison made some extremely good runs down the right but had to pull up at the end of them since McClen was too busy playing to his adoring fan (She is very young and shrieks every time he gets the ball) to send him the killer ball; Beharall broke through from our area like Phillipe Albert on the rampage but got all mixed up at the other end as both sides stood aside to see what he could do - sadly he ended up kicking himself rather than the ball; the best move was from Coppinger (of course) who used his pace to jink through the Liverpool defenders and square the ball across the face of goal passed the flailing Friedel, it rolled agonizingly past the empty back post where the rest of our players glaringly failed to follow up. Half time found the bar closed and long queues at the only 2 burger vans since KP is being run on generators after a power failure at the Falcons game and our problems with the flood lights the week before. This meant no Bovril as we went to stand behind the Leazes goal to see what we could do in the second half. This means that we were miles away from the “offside” goal that Camara put away (the linesman was from Washington), but reckon it makes up for all the pathetic booing from the bairns whose folks don’t seem to think that teaching the younguns sporting behaviour is worthwhile. Titi gave us all the pleasure of seeing some real class and was the victim of a particularly mindless challenge from one of our senior pros, we joined in the minority who applauded him off the field. We replaced Brady and McClen with Green and Kerr, both of whom I rate, and we were not disappointed as they carved out plenty of intelligent passes and we looked for all the world like the team with the extra man (although 2 goals down, of course). Sadly, though, Robinson began work on Chapters 5 & 6 as his insistence on those extra 5 touches kept taking the ball to ridiculously tight angles filled by an enormous American keeper. His habit of then screaming obscenities hardly added to the display and won’t have impressed any watching scouts. Friedel even exchanged a puzzled expression and shrugged shoulders with those of us behind the goal after one of these displays, which raised some chuckles as the forlorn figure of Robbo slouched away for all the world like “Kevin the teenager”. All a bit disappointing, and sees Liverpool firmly on top of the league now. We saw enough good play and battling spirit from our side to feel that it hadn’t been a wasted exercise for them, and had been given the rare treat of a first class display at Kingston Park, courtesy of Camara; I don’t think the Scousers need to be too depressed about missing Fowler and Owen, I’ll gladly swap OUR bald, third choice forward for theirs.