18th May
The day dawned misty and wet, Akela was not organising this event so it was not a surprise. We met up in the shelter of the changing rooms. Our team of super stars were Tom, Alex (c), Shaun, Bradley, Tom W, Sam and Dan.
After assisting in putting the mess tent up, and the right side in, on the second attempt, we moved our team onto a pitch for some practice, we were moved on as this was not our pitch. We moved to another pitch and were again moved on, as there was only two more pitches and one had a game going on we found our correct pitch.
We were on first and our team was reduced to six when Tom W suffered a nasty tummy upset and went home sick. He was to be missed.
We faced the might of the 256th(a) in our first game, we did not know they were mighty until they had a three goal advantage. Alex scored a couple of goals but to no avail as we lost 5 - 2. This disappointed the Cubs and we had to wait for the other teams to play before we got a chance to outplay another team.
Sadly this did not quite turn out as we came up against the even mightier 145th who slaughtered us by 7 - 0. At this point we realised that it was unlikely that we would be going any further than the first round. We tried different goalies, Sam and Dan being the brave player between the posts. There was a long hopeful lob towards our goal that crept under the bar, "Even David Beckham couldn't have saved that one." was one comment.
After a wait for the other teams to play we ran on against the 146th, who had also lost both their opening matches, at the end of this match we still had not won a game but we had stopped our losing streak by drawing 2 - 2. Goals by Tom and Alex
Our final match was against the 82nd who we know from going on joint camps. They started strongly and despite sterling defense by Dan, Shaun and Bradley were two goals ahead at half-time. A substitution that brought Alex back on meant that we drew back to parity, helped by a goal by Bradley that Garry Linekar would have been proud of. Before a fluky, lucky goal that was offside, handled, fouled and lots of other things, just before the final whistle meant that we could go home and have a proper lunch. Final score 3 - 2
Much to our delight Tuesday Cubs won the event, beating all the junior football teams that also do Cubs..
At Akela's request the following is to be placed at random through the report. Sick as a parrot. Game of two halves. Tails up. Heads down. Brian. (I'll leave this as a task for the reader.)
A huge thank you to the referee's who did a fine job despite the barracking from the crowd, especially the ref on pitch C, who retained a sense of humour through out his ordeal. Thanks to the organisers Tony and Derek and to the Packs who turned up for their annual event. Our Cubs enjoyed themselves, some more than others.