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Backstop's boozy bender backfires

Gump's Saturday night excess gave his team a headache Sunday morning, as the suffering shotstopper and his disspirited mates stumbled to a 20-10 rout in Sunday's game.

While the veteran goaltender is no stranger to playing his way into form following one of his legendary benders, he never seemed to be able to get on track Sunday, flailing at looping long shots and kicking out soft rebounds to waiting forwards. And with every weak goal, his teammates' heads bowed lower.

"As soon as your team sees you let one of those long ones in, they lose confidence in you, and that brings them down," says the disconsolate goalie. It was just such a goal, on a long shot to his glove side that he should have stopped, that seemed to sink his struggling team after they had gamely battled to close the score to 9-8; they were outscored 10-2 the rest of the way.

"We were coming together, and then things just unravelled," says Bulldog of his side's second-half swoon.

"Gump just fell apart, he couldn't carry it for us," says Billy Idol. "We had some great goals, we had made some great passes and we were battling for the rebounds, we thought we were in the game."

As Gump struggled through his hangover haze, his opponents were only too eager to take advantage.

"You sure try to put it behind him, if you can," says the Colonel, who may have scored one of the most dazzling goals of the season when he streaked out of the corner, shifted the evil orange plastic ball through his feet and launched a rapier shot past the beleaguered goaltender.

"I think we just stuck to what we were doing, we kept perservering," says Unabomber.

With the rout at full tilt, Gump's thoughts turned to Gravol; the end of the game spelled relief.

"You pray for the end of the game so you can go home and sleep on the couch," says the queasy creaseminder. "Your stamina suffers, it's hard to get up and down, hold onto rebounds."

But for his teammates, the pain was just beginning.

"When you've got a teammate who has substance abuse problems, that creates problems in the locker room, problems on the court," says Billy Idol. "It seems like our goaltender gave up today."

Posted by jaysuburb at December 21, 2003 03:47 PM