The Last Football Match

Well, our football season ended on Saturday afternoon. We finished our league games last term, in April, but we were still in the knockout cup. The cup is sort of like the March Madness of Durham soccer. 64 teams enter, with 5 or 6 from each college. It's a 'one and done' tournament, meaning if you lose, you're out.

Unlike March Madness however, the pairings are random, not by seed. In the first round (last term) we drew a pretty bad team, and were able to beat them 3-0, our first win of the season at the time. It was a good game for us, because it was able to give us some momentum going into the rest of our league games, and we were able to finish our season in the third division strongly.

In the second round of the cup, we drew one of the best teams in the University. 'Stephenson College A'. They were actually the defending champions, having won the cup last year. They were near the top of The Premiership (the first division) whereas, we, as I've said were in the lower regions of the third division. Because the Durham University soccer season was over, some of the University players (the best 18 players in the entire university) who were part of Stephenson College also played for them. I think it's fair to say we were a bit overmatched!

Most of our team went into the match not really hoping to win, but hoping to avoid an embarrassing scoreline, like 8-0 or something. And I'm happy to say we did that.

We actually managed to lead the match at halftime 1-0, in an incredibly unrepresentative score. They had dominated the game, had a ton of shots and controlled possession. We had the ball twice in their half, and somehow managed to score with one of them. It was crazy. If you had told me before the match we'd be winning at halftime, I would have never believed it.

It was clear it was only a matter of time though, until they started to score some of their chances. And in the second half, they finally did, making it 1-1. I was subbed in soon after this, with the instructions to run as hard as I could. Most of our team was already very tired, so I had to tons of running to try to help. We kept working hard as a team, and unbelievably prevented them from scoring again. Our goalie had a world class performance, with over 10 amazing saves.

By the end of regulation, everyone on our team was dying. Partly because we were out of shape from Easter Vacation, and partly because we had to work extra hard to stay with this superior team. Because it was a cup match, the match could not simply end in a one-one draw, which would have been a fabulous result for us. Instead we had to go to 30 mins of extra time before penalty kicks if necessary.

To make a long story short, penalty kicks were far from necessary. After a heroic performance and giving it all we could for over 90 minutes, our team finally reached our breaking point. Players were dropping like flies on the pitch and having to limp off to rest, or have someone help stretch their cramping muscles. Nobody could really run anymore. Even I was unbelievably tired, and I only played for the end of the second half and 30 minutes of extra time. We gave up 4 goals in extra time, and were knocked out of the cup, thus ending our season.

Funnily enough, it was easily our best game of the season. Sure we'd lost 5-1, but we were more proud as a team than we had been after any other game, even 3-0 wins and 5-0 wins that we'd had. When our A team had played Stephenson A earlier in the year (they're in the same league), they had lost 1-0. Well, in 90 minutes, we'd drawn 1-1. It's always tough to end the season on a loss, but this was the best we could have hoped for. Nobody was disappointed.

I still have one more game left for the basketball team, so I'm now looking forward to that. In the meantime, lectures have pretty much ended for the year, and all that's left now is a few dead weeks of studying, and then exams. Most people are really stressed for exams, and it's not uncommon for people to spend entire days in the library studying. I'm obviously not used to this intensive method of studying. In American Universities it seems like people study a bit all through the year, there are essays and midterms and other checkpoints. Here the final exams are basically it. I'm doing my best to prepare. I'll keep you updated.