On Sunday 30th August our club was represented by two teams at the tournament hosted by Brighton Walking Football Club at Brighton University’s Falmer campus.
The ‘black’ team (pictured) was mostly made up of current over 50s league players, and had a very successful group stage, winning all three games (1-0, 2-0 & 3-0) with three clean sheets. Thanks to the tournament’s slightly quirky format, our team’s (somewhat dubious) reward for winning the group was to be paired in the semi-final with Tottenham Hotsteppers, the walking football club affiliated to PL club Tottenham Hotspur, who play in a Spurs kit and compete (very successfully) in the Middlesex WF League. We lost 2-0 in a game which would have made a fine and fitting final. Tottenham (who went on to beat Worthing Reds in the final) are an extremely good team, with lavish skills on show, but we played some very good football oursleves and created a few good chances at the other end, including a great chance to take the lead in the first half. MOM was undoubtedly Gary Smith, who made a string of outstanding saves during the game.
As for the ‘yellow’ team, they were a mixed group of Pretenders who had not played competitively together before. In the group stage they had three defeats, with results of 0–1, 0–1 and 0–3.
However, they faced some really tough opposition, particularly Worthing Reds in game 2 and Poets Corner in game 3, so there was plenty to be proud of, despite the scorelines. They also lost the penalty shootout for the 4th-place teams so it’s fair to say it wasn’t quite their day.
All in all though, it was a rather good way to spend a Sunday morning. Well played everyone, and well done for battling together against tough opponents.