We'd all spoken about this for a while.......stepping up as a competitive outfit. Some of the guys, while loving the weekly game, missed the bite of competition. The hebdomadal fun days, are a chance to up your fitness, focus on yourself but tone down your aggressive nature, we all have it, but there are people new to footy coming down, we don't wanna scare em off!
But there is a flip-side which isn't always seen by everyone. The guys who want to compete, are essentially sacrificing a part of their game, hence the establishment of the 2G (The Second Game) group. A selection of players who were a) had the ability and b) wanted some more bite to their games. This meant a once and a while game against proper teams, tournaments and hopefully one day, joining a weekly league.
Part of that, was entering the annual FootyAddicts 7aside Tournament. £120, squads of 10, Market Road Pitches in Camden. 6 groups of 6 teams. Minimum of 5 games, 12 minutes in length.
We planned this in advance. I've oft-spoken about the travails of organisation, I love it, but it can be really tiring. Part of it is the lack of respect and organisation amongst our generation today. People are fixated to mobiles phones, care more about their own appearances on apps, rather than actually getting out and doing stuff. Football is a just something to do, when there's nothing better on offer.
As such, we had a 12 strong squad of players months in advance. But as the date neared, so did the drop outs. Injuries accrued, holidays were planned, excuses made, and plain lack of responses when chased up. The week before the tournament we had scrambled around for last minute players. All looked set, but then Covid, reared its head, so we headed into the tournament with 7 players.
Bit of a joke really.....on the one hand, people keep asking me for competitive games. But then when we have spent months planning it, only 5 players made themselves available. Pathetic....I even had to step to play, which wasn't part of the bargain. It ruins things for everyone. The 5 players (Jumbo, JJ, Podge, Berkz, Mithu) who had signed up, were excited but only because they thought we were putting out our strongest team. They had given up their Saturday for this. We managed to get 2 x players courtesy of Podge's housemates.....but one had a bad leg injury. It's a shame, I wont be embarrassing people, but they know who they are. I think those people, find it easy to shrug off, they weren't present, so it doesn't affect them. But it does. What they don't realise (this applies to the lazy sods who never take part in our weekly game), is that this is all a reflection on their character. The lack of organisation and laziness, these are aspects of their personalities and I'm calling it out. The same attributes transfer over to their daily lives and work. These people really don't stand a chance of progressing in life with their current traits.
Anyways, moaning over, let's get on with the football.
It was hilarious, we all arrived early which was great, but what we faced was a lot of fit, muscly looking lads. An element of fear had set in. Oh well, we had enough for a team, all we could do now was try our best. Things out of control had scuppered our best laid plans, none of which was our fault, all that was left to do was to go out and try our hardest and have fun.
Funnily enough, we received our fixture list and with no games played, we were on top of our group....it could only go down from here onwards right.......and sure enough it did ha!
GAME 1 - FC7 vs Conte Ball
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