I'm too old for this sh...

[lookout123]

As promised (or threatened) in my kids' sports thread here is a recap of my sunday.

The club that I play soccer at and coach at hosts tournaments from time to time. I've never been involved with them, well - because I suck. I'm a decent rec league player or at best a solid low level competitive player. I didn't touch a ball for more than 15 years and have only really been playing about a year and a half. I go out and have fun, that's it.

They advertised a tournament with competitive and rec divisions. A couple of guys I know were interested so they registered us. We had no delusions of trophies in our future, just a day of fun. We were 7 rec players going to kick a ball around in a rec league tournament. No problem.

Except for that one little problem. No other rec teams registered so we were thrown into the competitive tournament. Ouch. The 7 of us who had never stepped on the field together in a tournament with 2 semi-pro teams, and various teams made up of MLS wannabes, semi-pro, and club players. This was stupid. But we stayed. So that makes US stupid.

Tournament format was 5 and a keeper, 1 sub for the tournament. Minimum 5 games. Games are two 7 minute halves with a 30 second break. That means the entire tournament will be played at top speed. Indoor rules, off the walls, no offside.

We managed to draw our first game 2-2. Our second game we lost 1-0. Not too bad, but we had held them scoreless until the last minute. We tried to draw encouragement from the idea that we were starting to gain a little team chemistry, and we were having fun regardless of the score. Our third game was pretty intense with a couple of cheap tackles taking down our more tempermental forward. We went in 1-1 at the break. The second period was a bit more intense as the other team grew more frustrated. With a minute left I made a bit of a desperate tackle in front of our goal the ball popped up and I managed to rise just bit higher than the other guy and head the ball down field. I raced onto the ball with only their keeper in front of me and my teammate moving to his backpost. I drew the keeper out as he thought i was about to shoot, but he was stranded as I lofted it over to my teammate who knocked it in. Yeah! We win.

We had only 30 minutes to revel in the fantabulosity of the football we'd just played before our next match. At this point we had already exceeded our own expectations and were just having fun. Game four changed that. We stepped on field and looked at our opposition and realized a change of game plan was needed. We were playing against club guys that are part of the olympic development program. As much ridicule as our national program deserves, there is still plenty of quality to school us rec guys. We decided to just play for the draw and try to contain them. Everybody on their team was pretty friendly and they were taking it fairly easy on us. Except for one guy. Utter prick. In the grand scheme of things his skills are "ok", but on this field he was doing his best ronaldo impression. Nice footwork, tricks aplenty. Beating us by more than 5 points serves no purpose in the tournament because of the way points are accumulated. It is generally considered poor form to run it up stupidly beyond that. By the break they were up by 7 and the rest of his team was obviously uncomfortable, but he kept going. I guess I should mention that throughout the first half he'd been trash talking us and being pretty shitty. "Yeah, I know I suck - what's your point? Yes, you should own me on the field, you hope to play pro. No, I'm sure you didn't fuck my mother last night" Those are the kind of responses we gave back, because we just wanted to get the game over. In the second half we decided to just shut him down and at least not let him score - we had already seen he wouldn't pass. It was working reasonably well, until he made a pointless cleats up slide at my keeper. No injury, but he was cautioned. But then we were all stunned when from the stands we hear an older woman scream at the ref to "quit protecting that bunch of pussies!" And then one of his teammates yelled at the prick to tell his mother to sit down and shut up. Seriously? His mom? His mom is in the stand calling us pussies? Whatever. The next time he is coming down the right side he is playing his footwork again and I just waited until I saw my opening - he popped the ball up to go around me and I buried my cleats as far as I could into the soft part of his thigh. He's screaming, his mom is screaming, and I just shrugged and pointed out that I was "only a rec league loser" and I really couldn't be expected to control my feet well. I got a yellow card for the kick, he got a yellow for arguing with the ref. Now he's pissed and going to show me how it's done. He scores once more, but gets really pissed when I quietly mention that I hope his sister is better in bed than his mom was. Now I'm having fun. I have no idea what the score is, but I'm having fun. He comes down the side again and I just flat out check him into the boards. He's screaming for me to be ejected but the ref says I got ball first so clean tackle. He is fit to be tied, but he completely loses it when I ask him if his mom had shown him the video we made yet. He can play a mean game of soccer but he can't throw a punch for shit. He misses completely but the ref shows him a red card for violent behavior. He missed the rest of his prescious little tournament. Strangely, not a single player on his team seemed upset. He was still screaming when he got in the car and left with his mom.

The next game we ran pretty close throughout the whole game. As a whole we were smaller and quicker on the ball, but they were bigger and owned us in the air. A nice series of switches and crosses saw us work the ball down the field and put the ball in the net with a clever little backheel. Then all hell broke loose. They had been trying to run the clock out every chance they got by kicking the ball out of bounds and such. We had less than a minute left but we were confident we could score again. My guy who had just scored ran to grab the ball out of the net for a fast restart but their keeper "fell" on it. Then he refused to give the ball up. My guy reaches for the ball and gets blindsided by a punch from someone on the other team. It's off to the races with fists flying and people falling. We manage to get everyone separated and the ref resets the clock at 40 seconds. The other team is demanding we be ejected since we don't belong in the tournament anyway. We restart the game and they decide to just kill the clock off by kicking it out of bounds whenever they get it. The game ends a draw and we're walking away when the other keeper walks up and punches my keeper in the back. WTF! Bizarrely he did it right in front where all the referees are sitting. The whole team is ejected from the tournament after the referees discuss the situation with the director. Apparently they'd had problems in their other games too.

So we are sitting licking our wounds and telling stories about how we came to a competitive tournament and had some fun. 1-2-2 was a better record than we'd expected before the first kickoff. Then the completely unexpected happened. We were notified that due to that team being ejected, our record, and the way tournament points were awarded - we were due on the field for the semi-final game in 15 minutes. WTF? Semi-final? Surely they must be joking. They assured us that we were in fact in the semi-final and they preferred not to be called shirley.

We stepped on to the field for the semi-final aching, sore, and ready to go home. We were about to play the first place team in the tournament and we just knew this was going to be painful. They scored on us in 11 seconds. Ouch. Then something weird happened. I can only think that it was our rec league unconventional tactics that did it, but something threw them out off rhythm. These guys were good, really good. But they just couldn't finish. I got several blocks and tackles in that were just sheer desperation and luck. Our forwards managed to knock a couple in from bizarre angles as well. We were going into the final two minutes trailing 4-3. One of our guys had the ball on a flat breakaway that looked to all the world like an easy goal when he unexpectedly lost his footing and came down hard. He went from full sprint to sliding on his face in the blink of an eye. I was right by him and realized he was seizing. He had hit his head so hard that he'd lost consciousness and gone into convulsions. I and another guy who is a paramedic kept him immobile until the ambulance came. He was ok with no permanent damage, just some scratches and a hell of a headache.

The other team was really supportive and one of them even talked of forfeiting the game as they didn't feel right about winning like that. Complete class. We, of course, did not allow them to do that. They deserved the win and went on to their final. We collected our gear and had a few laughs on our way to our cars. We had played 6 games in 6 hours in a different tournament than we had planned on playing and we had made it farther than we had thought possible. Our keeper suggested we practice and enter more tournaments together, but he wisely dropped the subject when he caught our glares.

That was Sunday. Today is Friday. I have a regular game to play tonight that seems a little ominous to me. I've only just today started walking without a limp, and the bruises are still a lovely shade of purple. But it was fun. When is that next tournament again?