Our football team is back in action with a new badge, a new kit and a fresh line-up.
We’re training and playing weekly in a 5-a-side league. Then we learned about ‘The Pitch‘. The advertising students from UCA Farnham are preparing for their grad exhibition and in their words: “Our university isn’t helping with funding, so we need to raise as much as possible off our own backs. But that isn’t a problem, because with constraint, comes creativity! Our main fundraising event is a huge football tournament between Advertising Agencies, Students and Graduates.” We signed up and made our way down to Wembley Goals on Friday night.
On arrival, we found out we’d be playing four games during the group stage, the top two teams then going through to the knock-out stage. Our first game was against a student team named Gareth’s Gazelles. It ended as a 1-1 draw, our main concern, Prad picking up a knock after only 5 minutes of action. Not a great start. We re-grouped and took to the pitch against BD Network, comfortably beating them 4-0. That was quickly followed by the biggest test of the group stage against The Marketing Store, our lads dug deep and earned a 1-1 draw. Three games down and 5 points on the board things were looking pretty good.
The only downside to a great tournament were prolonged gaps in-between games and later in-between rounds. To keep warm and kill the time we relied on aerobics (Martin) Coward style. The final group game arrived and we comfortably earned another 3 points beating Aquaduct 2-0, finishing 2nd in our league with 8 points and remaining unbeaten. We awaited news of the identity of our opponents in the knock-out stage. During the break in the competition we attempted to walk Prad back to the bar area, it wasn’t happening and he was carried instead. Paramedics were available and Prad was carted of to hospital for a full diagnosis (BIG thanks to Rosie for accompanying him for 5 hours in A&E). We’re assured that it isn’t broken but you can see the bruising below, ouch.
Back to the competition, the lads had to compose themselves for a knock out quarter final game against….wait for it….The Marketing Store!? But how was that? We’d just played each other in the group stages. After both teams questioned the decision, we were told that nothing could be done and that the decision was final. We headed out to the pitch for the return fixture. This time with much more at stake. It was never going to be easy going up against the team that had ended up top of our league and despite the efforts of our players we were beaten by the most slender of margins, 1-0. There was obvious disappointment, but also pride in our team. By the time all of our players were deservedly relaxing with beverages in hand we put our support behind our defeaters The Marketing Store. As they marched on to the final to take on one of the two AKQA teams the tiredness was certainly showing. After taking a 1-0 lead The Marketing Store lost their rhythm as AKQA stormed back and buried 2 decisive efforts. Final score 2-1 to AKQA ’The Pitch’ champions of 2012.
We’d like to say a big congratulations to all of the students at UCA Farnham responsible for the event, we thoroughly enjoyed our Friday night out West (well most of us). To everyone else please take a look at The Orchard for more info on the Farnham grad show. Thanks for having us, see you next year. Any agencies looking to challenge us in the meantime please leave a comment below.
