The sausages and sushi will taste better than ever at Jonathan Adelman’s famous end-of-season BBQ this year.
Two down, five to go. That’s the target for Norstar London Raiders between now and May, and only a brave man would bet against them winning the lot.
The club’s respective B and Masters teams already have silverware in the bag, and deservedly so. Although Redbridge Jewish Care B boss Jon Jacobs may disagree after the league awarded NLR three points from their aborted match in October, the B’s have been the model of consistency, averaging almost four goals a game. Goalkeeper David Simnock registered seven clean sheets, and with Dave Esterkin and Nicky Woolf contributing a total of 20 goals between them, they won it in style. They won it the Raiders way.
The challenge now is for the Masters team to add the Henry Swerner Cup to their league title, the C-team to clinch the Division Three title, plus the small matter of the A-team winning the treble. And with talk of Oakwood fielding a weakened team in NLR’s final league game on Sunday — ahead of the Cyril Anekstein Cup semi-final — the club is, as Adelman says, really on the verge of something quite special.
A-team manager Phil Peters had his tongue firmly in his cheek when he said: "Chairman Jonathan Adelman has offered to buy dinner for the Camden side at their favourite restaurant if they can do the double over our noisy neighbours (Hendon) next week, and I’ll throw in a Kinder Egg for anyone who scores a goal!" Now there’s an offer.
Trebles have been won before in Maccabi football, but NLR are within spitting distance of a remarkable achievement, and if they sweep the board and claim all seven titles, then we might just see an open-top bus parade on the streets of Temple Fortune.
* Not every team in the MGBSL is equipped to play fantasy football, but it’s clear L’Equipe joint-manager Dan Cordell is not a fan of Temple Fortune’s style of play. Perhaps he was frustrated by his team’s inability to claim maximum points as their promotion challenge was dealt a blow. He said: "I think likening Fortune to the Jewish version of Bolton is probably a fair description and this is not meant in offence, but just an apt description of a team playing route-one football very effectively."
* Not many members of the community can say they’ve played at an Olympic venue, but that will change soon when the Maccabi Team GB Futsal trials take place at the CopperBox, ahead of the European Maccabi Games in Berlin. The Open squad will be put through their paces on March 2.
