28 Minutes of Adrenaline

No lunchtime indoor soccer competition for this season :-(

This was the highlight of my working week. Struggle through Monday to get to Tuesday. Tuesday morning flies by and then it's time. Get changed, meet some friends and head for the game.

This is for a mixed indoor soccer competition held during lunch. This is Futsal, as in Futbol Sala, hall football, indoor soccer the way the South Americans play it. Mind you the game might be slightly different in that we are not as skilled as the Brazillians, game is not a spectacular nor fast but still fun altogether.

This should not be confused with the other form of indoor football which involves kicking an extremely large, furry tennis ball on astro turf. We play on a hard court which is also used as a basketball court. Actually the board tends to get in the way sometimes but if the ball goes in the hoop it counts as a point, NOT!

I play a mixed team, at least 1 female player during the game at all times, 5 a side, and a goal scored by a female player counts as 2 points. This is to encourage guys to pass to the gals and to show the goal keeper how bad he is since he could not even stop a ball kicked by a girl!

Two 14 minute halves, and 2 minutes break in between to rest and discuss tactics or just rest after all, 14 minutes of adrenaline pumping action can be quite tiring.

For this season, it's a new team which means teamwork is a foreign word. I have been playing every season and at least half the team would change. In fact, ever since I started, 5 seasons ago, I am the only one left from the original team. I know what you are asking and the answer is, NO! I bathe everyday and use deodorant regularly. I started the league with a friend who had to quit the comp since he moved to another company, which is not in the local area, but in another country. The airfare to play a lunchtime comp is just not economically viable. There's also jet lag before the game.

Historically, my team has never been in the best position at the points ladder. Mainly second last. We did go up this time though, 3rd from last place. This was after winning 1 game by default, winning 1 game properly (5-1) and having 2 teams that did worse than us even though one of them beat us during a match.

The question now is, WHY! Why keep playing when you can't win? Why waste all that energy for nothing. Why go through the sorrow of defeat? I guess it's because during that 28 minutes of game time, there's always that little bit of hope. That hope that somehow we will the match no matter what. We must always feel positive no matter what. Even when there's only a minute left and we're down by 8 points, there's always that little bit of hope that by some unbelievable miracle we could squeeze in 8 points in 60 seconds.

Then reality set's in. Even the late Mother Teresa could not perform this miracle so the referee blows his whistle and we shake hands with the victor being the good sports people we are. We catch a cab back in our sweaty team uniform, (I bet the driver regret picking us up), and discuss tactics for next week's game. The weekly cycle.

28 minutes of excitement and now I will not be having it for 3 months! What to do? Have lunch in front of the laptop and read the daily news and perhaps think about tactics for the next season. At least I have my Saturday soccer games to satisfy my craving but that will be another story....