Character Creative FC
Character’s been up and running for nearly 4 years now so our first foray into the world of corporate sports has been a long time in coming.
Thank the Lord for Powerleague then who, having recently launched a new site in the city centre, called us up and invited us to play in their inaugural “Recruitment Cup”.
“Awesome”, I thought! I play a bit and I’ve a few mates who are pretty handy so I figured it’d be pretty easy getting a team together to cause some damage - especially against a bunch of recruitment agents!
I was very excited; so much so I even cobbled together a club crest and got some shirts printed!
(Mmmm… check out the Gill Sans on that!)
Things, however, did not go to plan!
First up there’s getting the squad together. When you’re knocking on the door of 30 years old and many of your friends have long since entered that room, you’ll be amazed at their prevalence to all manner of injuries. Heads, shoulders, knees and toes were all mentioned along with backs, calfs, groins and anywhere else you care to mention.
Anyway, despite those issues, I managed to rope in 7 of us and when we were warming up, I actual thought we might be pretty handy - 2 minutes into the first game we were even 1-0 up!
Sadly it didn’t last and our lack of pre-match practice began to show through. As it turned out, that 2 minutes was to be the only time in the entire tournament we’d hold a lead as we slumped to a 6-2 defeat, followed by losing 4-2 and rounding it of with a 5-0 thrashing.
We’d been knocked out in the first round. Not great.
By the end we weren’t happy and talk turned to a stitch up - to my mind those other teams seemed to resemble the likes of Gerrard and Lampard much more than the pinstriped suited, barrel chested recruitment consultants I’d been led to believe they would be! (sour grapes much?!)
So with dented pride we sloped off home in the drizzle, I reluctantly asked for a fiver off each our players for the “privilege” and I bagged the shirts up and hid them from view… until the next time that is…!
