2020 was a terrible year as Covid-19 came, saw and conquered the World. Early optimism, that we were seeing light at the end of the tunnel come the year-end was put to the sword, as we were plunged into yet another lockdown mid-December.
It meant that we would start 2021 in the worse possible way, stuck at home and organised sport banned as part of government guidelines. We achieved a lot in 2020, creating FC7 for a start, but any hopes of progression, were dashed, as we eagerly awaited news with every passing day.
But similar to the summer before, when Covid arrived, there was plenty of things to be getting on with. We’ve said before, you can still live your life to the full, just different. So, what did we do in 2021?
In a year where Covid fought back……FC7 fought back harder!
3 gruelling months would pass before we were legally allowed to start playing and our first game back was sadly doing a Testimonial for John S, at Shoreditch. We gifted him with an FC7 scarf and bobble hat, and more importantly it was the debut of our YouTube channel. Okay, our videos were pretty sh*&t back then, but we were just starting out, we’ve improved loads since then, experimenting with different camera clamps, tech and angles but as of now, we had pretty much clocked it and my editing skills had come on too, to make us look, just a little more professional.
Our 1st game of 2021, and John's Testimonial
We uploaded 32 videos, now known lovingly as 7edits, it’s been a real team effort, Jumbo going through the full game footage and picking out the highlights, my niece Sofia (9 aka Mango Sofiecow) picking the soundtracks and my nephew Daniel (12 aka MrMagmaYT) helping with the Youtube analytics. Not to mention, the starring cast….YOU, the footballers, both the Se7enistas, the randoms and the refs who all made it happen.
We’ve just past 10,000 total views for our channel, not a mean feat, given we only filmed for 9 months, and recently things have exploded with our 7edits regularly getting 300, 400, 500, 600, 700 views. According to the analytics, we have a large following in Japan and Korea, and this is reflected in our Instagram page, now over 1500 followers strong as we grow as a club month on month.
Sure, Instagram and YouTube are fun, a little digital scrapbook of nostalgia for everyone to remember our games, I’ve heard first hand from Ash, that he pings out the links to his family in the US, that on its own makes it worthwhile. We regularly update Alessandra (Luca’s widow) and his parents on our shenanigans and they have said it brings warmth to their hearts. It’s a small backstory, but also serves to remind us why we do what we do. We all love football, but bringing joy to others, is something we are all part of, and should be proud of.
First drink up of the year!
Aside from the human aspect of our digital adventures, we’ve been contacted by other teams for potential games, been given discounts by kit suppliers, and just been praised for some of the awareness we’ve tried to raise given the platform we now have.
Speaking of discounts by kit suppliers, EV2 Sportswear, came to us, and worked on delivering some sick FC7 home and away anniversary kits, which look brilliant. Highly customised, we have our ever-present sponsors Unisport (who pay 45% of the costs), plus some cool sleeve art, the Skull and Crossbones (a small nod to our past and original logo, yeah it looked like a 5-year-old did it) and the Japanese kanji symbols for the “Way of the Warrior”, the FC7 way of life. The backs have FCSE7EN instead of names, numbers and a dragon symbol (our logo animal ha) with the initials of L.S., another small reminder of Luca, and a nice touch, to show his family, he always plays with us despite not being here.
The "Black n Red"
All of the above shows how much we have achieved off-field, but what about actually playing football?
What have we achieved on the green surf? Or was it all for an imaginary club we had invented in our minds?
In short, NO!
We delivered on the pitch too, here’s some of the home runs we batted out of the park during the year.
We started playing in earnest, the 1st April 2021 (no jokes or fools here!), kicking off the year with John’s Testimonial, and some of our key goals (pardon the pun) were to up our numbers in general, and our weekly attendance on average, from last year. I’m happy to report after liberal use of Tableau, that we delivered on both fronts.
Year Average Weekly Attendance
2019 5.1
2020 5.5
2021 6.1
New Signups for 2021: 12
There’s a steady improvement by year, but we 100% can do better, so 2022 will be represent a big push to increasing our numbers again and another strong drive to getting that weekly average up too. Twice we managed to hit another goal of a full match of FC7 players, getting 10 signups was unthinkable a year ago, but we’ve proved it possible, so we need to all start to step up more. I’ve said several times now, we are all in the WhatsApp group because we love football……..so let’s play it.
Halloween Footy '21 - Oranges vs Greens
We also signed up 12 new players during the year, which is great. If you think about it, that’s more than a whole starting XI. It shows again, what we can put together when we focus as a team. If those 12 new players on their own, played weekly, we could be putting out an 11-a-side, with all of the current regulars, we’ve realistically got over 20 players in our pool, so there’s no excuses, and the sky really is the limit as to what we can achieve and organise for 2022.
On a side note, it’s been pleasing to see Mitchell sign up a couple of the group to his Weekend elevens team and for them proceed to be fined for getting yellow cards in their debut game! We’re here to help in any shape or form, so use the group, if it’s footy related, go for it!
Going back to our anniversary, back in July, we finally ticked off another KPI on our bucket list and played down at Archbishops Park. It’s a beautiful venue, hidden slap bang in central London next to the London Eye, surrounded by trees. It was a balmy evening, and we had a good turn out followed by some anniversary drinks on the weekend in Hammersmith, it marked our debut at The Distillers too. I’m sure we will have many drinks at this establishment. We’ve managed to wangle a 10% discount and I’m still working on that elusive 25% slash for FC7 players, so stay tuned!
Anniversary match down at Archbishop's Park and Drinks on the weekend@The Distillers in July '21
2021 also marked a cross roads in terms of the way we played. We all love the casual Thursday game, but there was a hunger for a more competitive flavour to our games. But it became obvious that we had something beautiful at that current time, and that it was going to be tricky to implement anything else. Eventually, it was decided that the best approach to this was the birth of the 2G. “The 2nd Game”, a game which was open to all, but firmly focussed on getting the more competitive players together to test their mettle against other organised teams.
It wasn’t for all, for players who wanted a casual game, in a safe and inclusive environment, we would all do everything we could to keep that for Thursdays. For anyone who wanted more competition, we setup the now infamous 2G games. The first game we organised was against 5 randoms down at Powerleague – Shepherd’s Bush, which ended in a 25-17 victory to FC7.
It was just an experiment but it was a success nonetheless. But ultimately it was against 5 randoms who hadn’t played with each other before. Was that really a measure of how good we could be? No.
Just after this victory, I got in touch with Kos, a Footy Addicts employee who organised a 6-a-side League down at Westway on Wednesday. It turned out that they had a team drop out of their 6-team league so for the last couple of weeks, needed a stand in team to compete to fulfil their schedule of fixtures.
Step up FC7. I won’t lie, it was difficult, our first game kicked off at 9.20pm (which is LATE) which meant myself, Ash, and Shaun W, had a lot of time to kill. We played Newco in our first ever game against league opposition and were tonked 8-1. But the game represented more than just the result for us. We had played a league team. We had ticked another key goal for the year. Sure, we were thrashed, but we learnt a lot that day. It’s also worth mentioning that Newco were gunning for the league title, so not a bad result, all in all.
The following week we came up against “Bobby Firmino Out FC”, and after the 1st half, we were only 4-3 down, to a dodgy penalty due to a rule we didn’t even know about. Our fitness faded badly in the 2nd half and we ended up losing 9-3. But again, this wasn’t about the result for us……the game represented more than that. It showed we could get ourselves organised, and we were far from full strength too, LaPulga Chris, can’t play Wednesday games, so a massive loss. But we have some really decent players who weren’t present, so we can only get better.
Some of the 2G gang, are 100% up for joining a league in 2022, we’ve had some ups and downs, but I’m determined to deliver on this, another goal for us to hit come the new year!
And that’s not all…….come November ’21 and we finally made good on a 2 year promise we had made to Luca, and setup the much anticipated “Finance vs I.T.” match. Padraig and Fatjet had rallied the respective departments and organised the game, literally, in the space of a night. It goes to show, again, what we can achieve when we put our minds to it. It’s a tireless job, organising footy…….but it’s worth it, when it all comes together…..so let’s do this more.
We had a couple of last minute drop outs, the CFO, Ed, to name one, but others like JJ and Khilan nobly stepped up when it mattered.
The game itself was worthy of the hype. Finance racing into a 7-2 lead, and actually silencing me for a brief period of time. But the I.T. lads didn’t let me down, Darren B, making a match winning debut, as the nerds fought back to 8-8, before there was a full on slugging match like 2 glorious heavyweight boxers from a bygone era to make it 10-10. Alas, for Finance, I.T. were beginning to compose themselves and tightened the screw to win and make the final score 14-10.
We had some spectators come down (Alice, Scarlett, Sofia, Dani B) to cheer the respective teams on, and we all went down to The Distillers to celebrate the game, both teams and to drink into the wee hours of the night. I’ve said it before, but football was the real winner here. We all had a great time before, during and after the match.
Finance vs IT - A 2 year promise made good
Not ones to stand still, we don’t want to disenfranchise the rest of our footy group, so we have plans to get a “Planning” team setup so Shaun W and Ash will be heading that up. Ben will be setting up a waif and strays’ team for other FitFloppers who can’t get the numbers in their own departments, and we’ll be getting the non-company guys together for a team too.
So maybe a mini league of 5 teams for the new year?
I.T.
Finance
Planning
The Rest
Non-FF
Sounds like a plan……we can but try……we have shown this year, with Covid-19 still bearing down on us, that anything is possible……so why not? It’d be too easy to sit back and just do our weekly game.
FC7 don’t do EASY!
Sadly, 2021 draws to a close, very much as it began, with a dark cloud of Covid uncertainty. At the end of November, a new variant of the virus, Omicron, was discovered, and BoJo predicted a tidal wave of infections looming, as he urged us all to get a 3rd booster jab. Things are beginning to get railed back again, at work, our Xmas party was cancelled, we reduced our desk capacity due to social distancing before eventually implementing the working from home rule as per government guidelines.
As I write, we’re still unsure whether further restrictions will be enforced, or if indeed another lockdown will happen again. Could organised sport be curtailed again?
Truthfully, we don’t know. But one thing we are sure of, is that we have been here before, and we made it through. If you need any example of what can be achieved full stop, read all of the above, but in the shadow of a global pandemic, what we delivered needs to be celebrated even more.
What’s planned for 2022? We’ve already talked about upping our general numbers and weekly average, that will always be a constant yearly goal. We’ve talked about getting a few more internal teams together and we have had a lot of talk from about half a dozen girls about a mixed game.
That’s planned early on for late January. It’ll be interesting, as talk is just the start……they need to stand up and be counted….so fingers crossed that’ll be something we can tick off. We’ve also still got a lot of interest for joining a league for the 2G players, given the leagues are usually a maximum of 6 teams, its only 10 weeks, so we’ll see how that goes, and whether there’s an appetite to compete regularly, football is about competition fundamentally. Finally, we have sounded out some companies nearby our workplace about some future games……so time to unite and take on the common enemy people!
Here’s to an amazing year of football 2021. Bring on 2022.
Remember, you can still live life to the full……Just differently!
Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year to you ALL!
#fc7life
Comments