June 5th
We entered two teams, a boys team and a girls team, it seemed a good idea at the time as we had a lot of Cubs express a desire to take part.
Naturally Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny with the prospect of a fine day, but we still had to go through with the 5-a-side football. The Leaders, Akela and Hathi arrived early and were joined by, Sammy, Alice, Deanna, Ryan, Jamie, Paris and Breiz. We had enough for the girls team and only two boys so Akela rang a few of the people that had said that they would be there and got a response from only two. Julie got up from her sick-bed to bring Megan who played and Matt who came along to support the team and Alison brought along Charlie.
At this point Akela decided that we would scratch the boys team and have just the one team. The boys were a little alarmed to discover that the team would play in the same colours as originally planned i.e. pink. This look was then repeated on the girls faces when they were told that when the boys were substituted they would have to swap shirts with the girls.
The Team manager were called over to have the rules explained, when this resulted in only a few people responding, the call was put out for the Akelas to congregate and the number of people increased immediately. The rules were simple, normal rules for football 3 minutes each way, anyone heard swearing would be sin-binned for the rest of the day, referee's decisions were final and were there anybody who fancied a go at being a referee? and did Akela know that the organiser had all his carefully drawn up plans put into disarray because he wanted to scratch one team. Akela admitted that he did not know or care particularly.
We were put into the same group as Tuesday Cubs so we had that to look forward to. Our first game was against the 82nd. They were stood in their matching shirts and shorts muttering about a team of girls. Hathi wandered across when their Akela had moved away and put an element of doubt into their minds when he told them that the girls intended to give anyone that scored against them a big kiss. This was met with a stunned silence. Naturally despite them playing much better than our part timers we drew 0 - 0. A start better than we had dared hope for.
We then had a rest for four games before we met Tuesday Cubs for our biggest match of the group. We were determined not to fail, Ryan our superstar goalie was only beaten by a break-out goal once in the first half. The complete team, apart from Ryan was substituted for the second half and managed to draw 0 - 0. Our first defeat, but it was not to be our last.
Our next game was against the 5th and shock horror for the first time in several years we scored a goal!!
Alice gave it a huge boot and left their keeper stranded on the line. A later effort resulted in a shot looped over the goal and managed to bounce off the back of the head of a spectating Cub on an adjacent pitch. A moment to savour. Our lead lasted well into the second half before they got themselves into gear and ran past our defence and put the ball past Ryan, so another draw.
Our next game I'll draw a discrete veil over we were faced with a Cub team that had their own football team that took it all very seriously, rather sad but there you are some people enjoy football and others suffer it. We played to enjoy ourselves but even so 7 - 0 was not that enjoyable.
Still reeling from the disaster our last game was a very bitty game that we lost 0 - 3.
The Cubs seemed happy that it was all over for another year the Leaders were not disappointed and we packed up and left the rest of the district football teams to play on.
Thanks to the Cubs that turned up, no thanks to the boys that let us down, there will probably be words on Wednesday. Thanks to the mums that came along and supported their youngsters.
