Weeeeee Are the Champions, My Friends ...

[ed_rex]

Maybe some of you remember that I took up recreation soccer (futbol) a year or two after I moved to Ottawa. (More to the point, a year or two after I stopped smoking.)

Or maybe I'm being presumptous, what with the state of LJ/DW these days. Maybe some of you remember me?

Regardless, I am no longer just some (old-ish) guy who signs up with a pay-to-play recreational league, playing with and against kids mostly in their 20s and early 30s, but am now the captain of my own team. Still paying to play, but now responsible for getting the filthy lucre out of my own team-mates' pockets.

Anyway, this past season was brutal. I waited too long to get together a full roster, and so was out of pocket about $300 instead of just my own share, and further, more than half the games necessitated a last-minute scramble for subs in order to field at least 6 players.

Nevertheless, though we ended up in fourth place, we came together as a team just at the right time. We man-handled the regular-season first place finishers 11 to 3, and in the championship game, with only six players on the field the entire 90 minutes (yes, Young Geoffrey, too), we took the game to penalty kicks, and took the (Sunday, co-ed, Division 5) championship 8 to 7.

It wasn't quite like winning the Stanley Cup, but — by damn! — it was pretty damned satisfying anyway! (Pretty damned cold, too. Our last game was played on a drizzly field with the temperature hovering around 5 C.)

So, in honour of said victory, in hopes of another in the upcoming seaons, please indulge me in the presentation of a brief piece of video proof that I really do make it onto the pitch.