It all began with the coss of a toin...

'Petit Grand Guignol have had a troubled season, with three players having to be destroyed because of BSE'

It's been another two days of non-stop, no-prisoners-taken football action in Europe, writes our fearless front-line football specialist René McGrit, as Britain's foremost fighting formations took on the most awesome opposition that mainland Europe could throw at them... (Just get on with it, René! writes the editor.)

It's been another two days of non-stop, no-prisoners-taken football action in Europe, writes our fearless front-line football specialist René McGrit, as Britain's foremost fighting formations took on the most awesome opposition that mainland Europe could throw at them... (Just get on with it, René! writes the editor.)

First into the arena were M1 Wanderers, who found themselves with a tricky home tie against the Transylvanian champions, FC Vlad. A draw would be good enough to get them through to the next round, unless on the same night the Spanish team, Real Pesetas, managed to beat their Italian rivals, Uffizi, by more than seven goals, in which case M1 Wanderers would have to beat FC Vlad by at least two goals, one of which would have to be a penalty. What made it even more tense was that M1 Wanderers had five yellow-carded players, which clashes horribly with their new purple strip .

"It was unbearable out there tonight," the M1 Wanderers manager Sir Ron Aston told me afterwards. "My lads are never the brightest mathematicians at the best of times, and found it very confusing as to what was expected of them, so they kept coming to the touchline to ask advice on the numerical state of play. We were also keeping an eye on the Real Pesetas scoreline via a link with a local Spanish radio station. Unfortunately, no one on the coaching side speaks Spanish, so we had to guess what the score was from the noise of the Spanish crowd. The only person at Wanderers who has got good Spanish is our Icelandic striker Rider Haggardsson, who spent two years with Diabolo Tarifa. Did you notice that I pulled him off for five minutes in the second half? People thought he was injured, but he wasn't - I just wanted him to listen to the radio for a moment and tell us what was going on in Spain. That'll be £400, thanks, René."

The evening ended well for M1 Wanderers, as their 1-0 victory over FC Vlad makes them runners-up in their group. But a rather stiffer challenge awaited the last London survivor in the Cup-Losers Cup, Upminster Barking, when they ran out to face last year's French Cup Finalists, Petit Grand Guignol. Guignol have had a troubled season so far, with three players having to be destroyed because of BSE problems, and another two being assassinated by jealous husbands, but they came good last night and pulled back Upminster Barking's aggregate 4-2 lead from the first two legs, to win 2-0 on the night and level with a 4-4 aggregate.

"This was only the third leg of the tie, René," Barking's manager, Scott Emulsion told me after the pulsating 90 minutes at Guignol's ground that produced two goals, three sendings-off and a goal-mouth incident involving a pregnant gypsy girl who ran on and accused Guignol's skipper, Jean-Pierre Rascal, of being the father. "There are at least another two legs left to play, and I think we can do it. My only worry is that the lads are being asked to play too much football. We're playing two matches a day most days these days, and it's hard for the lads to stay awake the full 90 minutes. I'd hate to have one of them sent off for falling asleep on the ball. Make it £200 for cash, ta, René."

Meanwhile, spare a tear for poor Midlands Ramblers, the troubled team from somewhere between Birmingham and Rugby. They have already been knocked out of the FA Cup, the Worthington Cup, the FTSE Top 500 and the Football Pub Quiz League. A week ago, they were thrown out of the Tropicana Night Club in Walsall, and as if that weren't bad enough, last night they came up against the French existentialist side Post-Modernist Paris Germain in sparkling form and had no answers to the questions they were asked.

"To be honest, René, we couldn't even understand half the questions," I was told by Ramblers Manager Ted Spitforth. "When their captain was asked to toss the coin before the match, and he started questioning the whole concept of toin-cossing, saying it was an insufficient demonstration of randomness, well, I knew we were in for a bit of a drubbing. Call it 50 quid, shall we René?"

Other results

European Banking Cup

Hamburg First Direkt 1 FC Overdraft 1

European Fruit Cup

Sporting Tomboys 1 Campo Campo 1

FA Vaz

Home Office 1 Petty France 1

Hinduja Bros 1 Bofors 1