Friday, June 26, 2009

Football on Riverside

Following an impromptu game of nighttime beach football at the GWDAW meeting earlier in the year, it was decided that there should be a more organised (and daylight) match at Amaldi. A group of 16 of us, made up from Europeans (a large chunk of whom were Italian, although unlike at GWDAW we didn't play Italians versus the Rest of the World), bar a couple of Antipodeans, went down to Riverside Park, in which we'd noted that google maps showed a football pitch-like shape. The shape we'd seen turned out to be a big astroturf pitch, which had a couple of baseball games going on in the corners and a football match in the middle. We tried squeezing in, but soon got informed by the coach (or some official-looking guy) of one the baseball games that we were supposed to have a permit to play there.

After some milling around and discussion of what to do we found a nearby patch of park ground that wasn't covered in trees (or fences designed to discourage ball games, which were quite liberally scattered around the most open of spaces) that would make a serviceable pitch. It had quite a slope on one side and was pretty uneven, but we made do. The game took a little while to get going and most people were showing signs of general lack of fitness, but towards the end (of our arbitrarily designated match time) we had a reasonable, and competitive, match going on. It was at 3-3, so we had a next goal wins situation, which through some brilliant touches of skill I scored.

I could definitely feel the effects of the match the next day as my left knee was suffering.

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