Brixton AFC 2–2 Aigburth FC: a failure of mathematics

Brixton AFC remain top of the table, which is the conventional measure of a good season, but Sunday 16 August's 2–2 draw with Aigburth FC at Matchday 22 carried a familiar smell of waste. The league leaders, on 42 points before kick-off, spent 66 minutes with an extra man and still needed a 66th-minute free kick to escape with a point against a side sitting 13th and generally out of sorts.

Barlow-Stanton gave Brixton the lead at 12', converting Quaedvlieg's pass with the kind of calm you would want from a man who spent last matchday merely laying on goals. That advantage lasted all of sixteen minutes. Aigburth, already reduced to ten, equalised at 28' through Alaba, from Fabiani-Petacci's assist. The response time was four minutes after the red card, which is not how the theory of man advantages is supposed to work.

The card itself was the afternoon's organising absurdity. George Cardew had spent his previous three matchdays doing quiet, useful work in midfield, including a late assist against Wessex on 14 August. On Sunday he was gone by 24', a straight red leaving Aigburth to defend a point at the league leaders with ten men. The ten men then went ahead. Yamasaki's free kick at 59', with Eccleston doing the unglamorous part, presumably felt like a protest against the whole concept of numerical superiority.

Brixton's equaliser came from the same source. Spada's free kick at 66', assisted by Hanai, brought the score level and let everyone pretend the previous 42 minutes of Aigburth defiance had been a formality. Both second-half goals arrived from dead balls, which suggests the afternoon's open play was largely a rumour.

The evidence is consistent: Brixton keep finding ways not to finish teams off, and Aigburth, already low on form, have added card-counting to their repertoire. Both sides return tomorrow for Matchday 23, which is perhaps the only mercy available. It is true that a point at the leaders with ten men counts as a kind of progress for Aigburth; the sample likewise shows that if Brixton keep offering this much company, the table will eventually do the sorting out for everyone.