This tournament was played on the fantastic synthetic grass field at PNU. The other teams came down from Ulsan & Jinju and it was a really great day. Although not without a large dose of madness, as usual ~ we arrived to the surreal and depressing sight of a game of American football just starting. Who were these people on our field? They were two university teams, there, playing a game, with about fifty spectators, without a booking. So we go to security, who confirm that they have nicked our field, but do nothing about it. We ask the coach to leave, who just laughs us off with some line about you got the paper but we're on the field now. So we all just walk onto the field, all four teams, and start kicking the ball around. A brawl looks like kicking off. (We would have won.) But just when it looks we're going to spend the whole day arguing and nobody playing any sport, we strike a deal that they can spend another hour there, and then go, which they did. So we start an hour and a half late. But what was that? Unbelievable cheek ~ pushing it right to the end to see how far they can go, when a simple booking would have done the trick. Now we had to shorten our games to just 35 minutes, because of that. Now I wish we had had a fight...

real 0 jinju 1

english knights 1 ulsan 2

real 2 english knights 1

jinju 0 ulsan 1

jinju 4 english knights 3

real 1 ulsan 1

  
pos
team
p
w
d
l
f
a
gd
pts
1
ulsan
3
2
1
0
4
2
+2
7
2
jinju
3
2
0
1
5
4
+1
6
3
real busan
3
1
1
1
3
3
/
4
4
english knights
3
0
0
3
5
8
-3
0

real busan 0 jinju 1

We start off reasonably well but still lose, and that's football. Credit to Jinju for taking their chance, it was a great goal too, a diving header from their guy Paul from a cross from the right said by their other guy Derek ~ but they may just forgive me for wondering how Real didn't score at least a couple in this game. The chances and the possession were there, yet the ball didn't go in the net. Funny. But not funny.

One theory is perhaps that sense of nervousness that appears when you go a goal down in a short game ~ already the clock's ticking and there's just a few minutes in which you must score ~ so you panic! That was something we never dealt with right. Our play was really urgent yet the final ball wasn't quite right, or the shots were wide, or their goalie saved them. Their goalie played great...

We missed Sebastian, who we won't play with again until August now, and who surely would have given us the creation we needed. In his absence we were more workmanlike, the "wow" was missing for sure. Although we still have the grit and determination, personified by Gino Nini, Mike Lamb, Brendan Morin and so on, but this time it never went in and we lost. He's really cool up there and he makes it happen. How we miss that now it's gone.

Didn't Jinju read the script? They were supposed to lose! Come down to Busan, lose, make us look and feel good. But they didn't ~ THEY DIDN'T!

real busan 2 pufs's knights 1

(gino nini, mark williams)

Real played a tighter game, staging th ewhole thing in the opponents' half, and won, although it should have been a far more comfortable scoreline than a mere 2-1 ~ at least five goals. We walked off disappointed. Once again it never went in, time after time. There was one chance for Rob Nish, who took a pass in the box and had eternity to stick it in, yet took "too long" thinking about it and put it wide. That one stood out among many and rest assured he will be severely punished for his sin. He is being tortured right now.

But it wasn't just Rob of course, we all take the blame for not thrashing this lot. Through the game we were pinning them back and creating chances. Steven Connell and Ian Baird were linking pretty well up there, and there were through passes, cross shots, pot shots, one-twos all around their box, yet just two goals. This so got on our nerves.

Occasionally we payed the price for pushing too far up ~ their strikers were fast and they scored with a speedy breakaway. John was "surprisingly" outpaced by their nippy striker on the break and they put their chance away really well to equalize the game at 1-1. How could they?

Either side of that came Real's goals ~ both from inside the box and from our established guys Gino and Mark. We were delighted to see them go in and you could feel the relief around the team with both goals, that the scoreline would have at least some sanity. But not enough of course. 2-1 is not enough sanity for that game.

real busan 1 ulsan 1

(gino nini)

A score draw against our old friends from Ulsan. A very good game ~ Real needed to win 2-0 to come top of the group, and should have easily done so. In the first ten minutes we created five great chances and scored none. Soon after we had an unbelievable chance to smack it in but Gino and Ian were both running and calling for it, none yielded and the chance went begging. Sigh.

Then Real went in front from another goal from defence from Gino ~ game on! One more goal and we win the tournament! Then true to form of all Real's games against Ulsan, it starts out with everyone behaving, but then tiring and starting the needling. Their Mexican guy was yelling for every call in sight and then Brendan picked up a yellow for pulling off the tackle of the day ~ who was that ref? There seemed to be little baiting matches going on all over the pitch, and then Ulsan equalize, through their best player Barry Leary, who went on another of his runs and put the ball in for 1-1.

Then the jelly-headed ref blows up for full-time, five minutes early. I wanted to strangle his stupid neck. By the time he admitted his error, Ulsan were 100 yards away and that was that, the time never got added on and the day was over. These refs done my head in all together ~ five minutes before the tournament started they tried to demand another w30,000. We never gave them that and they went ahead and reffed ~ at that point we should have just told them to "go away", and reffed it ourselves...

Anyway Ulsan won the tournament, Jinju second and Real third. What was that?! Anyway congratulations to them, they were gracious winners...

And we can claim to be gracious hosts ~ teams come up here for the day and go home not empty handed, with their first and second spots. Although we never planned it that way.

Now who's gonna organize the next tournament?

man of the day: gino nini

Gino brought his A-Game out today and at times I thought he'd done an Agent Smith and cloned himself, there seemed to be that many of him around. Two big goals from defence too. Tackling with toughness and skill, you bring it round him and he'll still get it back off you. Always in the action and almost won it for us. Well, we'll win the next one.