Shirtgate and the Beehive Cup

Sounds like a Harry Potter novel doesn’t it. No it is in fact our interdepartmental football competition.  Let me give you a little back ground on this. I have been building a football pitch since I arrived here. A couple of weeks ago our advisor told us we needed to do a lot more work before it is ready and I thought ‘I’ve been staring at this pitch for 11 months I am damn well going to play on it!’ So I told my team this is all the work you are going to do after I leave, but prior to that I want to stick up the posts and we are having a game of footy. Hence the Beehive Cup was born. Four teams, (Mother Teresa Children Centre, JPII college, Construction, Torrent Vehicle Hire) .

Two semi finals, a 3^rd place play off and a final. Done.

Well not quite, so the first issue was MTCC team. They wanted a strip. I said firmly that we weren’t buying strips for people as it would cost a lot. I checked with my team and was told we had a collection of red T-shirts. It was thought that some could play in shirts some in ‘skins’ if needed. This was not good enough as some people couldn’t get their shirts off?? I know right!? – So many questions.

The Players

Anyway we ignored the protests and carried on. Come the day of the competition my team produced a full strip of shirts with Beehive United written on the back. Brilliant! This is really gonna rile up the opposition. Especially when JPII suddenly produced there strip! Well I left Debbie to deal with the revolt from here team and tried to find out where our fourth team had got to. They had failed to emerge – along with the referee – I tell you trying to organise sporting competitions in the UK is bad enough in Africa it’s a nightmare.

But armed with my trusty bag and my scrabble tiles we did the draw for the semi finals – I just narrowly failed to secure Sky for the televised rites – and first up was JPII versus Construction.

A two fingered team talk - you know it's gotta to be good!

I rallied the troops, gave the team talk, found the ball, and we were off. Now to say that JPII where younger and fitter would be erm pretty accurate statement – they were a lot younger and a lot fitter. Luckily for us they were not better at football. We moved the ball left, we moved the ball right, dummies, one-twos, chips ahead and little layoffs! I tell you it was like watching Barcelona on the X-Box! And eventually our pressure told and we took the lead through a lovely move.

What I saw – A lovely through ball splitting the defence it two with a little dink and slick passing the ball was slide past the keeper.

What actually happened – the ball was hacked forward into the box where it ping ponged around quite a number of players until one managed to swing a leg in the general direction of the goal and it when in.

Sadly our lead didn’t last long and early in the second half a lobbed ball beat the offside trap (we weren’t playing offside so it wasn’t difficult) and their striker ran on and scored. And it stayed that way until full time.

Cue penalties. Four each. It was tense. The two teams lined up. Players stepped up to take shots. And our goal keeper stepped up to save them. Two to be precise meaning that Construction won the first game 1-1 (3-1 on Pens).

Praying over Bosco the goal keeper helped in the penalties!

Torrent plant had still not turned up so after a hasty discussion we decide to have a round robin completion and someone would have to work out a clever formula to decide a winner – not me!

The MTCC team was more of a unit than a team but they knew how to play football! So did the JPII keeper otherwise the score line would have been much worse than the 3 – 0 it finished. For me I was just glad that MTCC won which meant we could have a final and there would be no controversy and lynching over who won – they get very competitive out here.

The Final

I'd love to say this was a little dinked ball through but it is in fact a missed clearance.

I may be biased, but it was a good game. Construction stepped up to MTCC playing style and began to move the ball around with flair and attacking style – it didn’t work, we were so concerned with attacking we forgot about defending and were 2 – 0 down within 10 minutes. I decided to hang back a lot after that and yes there were some last ditch defending, a few slide tackles, I even took the ball out of the air off their strikers feet but it keep them at bay. And gave us the opportunity to claw one back. A free kick lobbed into the area missing everyone and into the goal – classy!

But the dream wasn’t to be – and despite the referee playing around 25 minutes of injury time – I think everyone was so glad to see a bit of interesting football – the game finished 2-1 and MTCC were crowned Beehive Champions.

I also lost the bottom of my shoe and completed the game with mismatched ones.

The MTCC supporters got a little anxious on the terraces.

But they needn't have worried.

I propose a 7s competition next week – see how they do at that!

Check out the shoes

The weekend was spent recovering – we had a lovely braai on Saturday, bit of music and chat and some alcohol may have been consumed.

Sunday – we went back to the restaurant that does Sunday roast – soo good. I had roast pork, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, gravy. It was delicious. Then we moved to one of the posh hotels for pudding and coffee. Tough life.

One thing that was very funny this week was Wednesday night football – not to be confused with Monday night football. For those that don’t know Monday night football comes in two guises – one is Sky Sports showing the Premier League game that always takes place on a Monday night, and the other is a US station showing the Monday night NFL game that occurs on Monday night. No the Malawi Wednesday night football is a bunch of expats – older enough to know better but young enough to still play playing 5 aside football. So there we were charging up and down the court trying not to pull a muscle (we annihilated the opposition by the way!) when I get a wave and a shout from the gym that overlooks the court. The principle of JPII Brother Henry is on a cross trainer. Now don’t get me wrong he is not the kind of monk that wears a brown robe and is seen with a cart laden with red wine – but you still don’t expect to see monks in gyms do you – it’s just not done!

And so this week we have a new toy to play with. An excavator with a rock breaking attachment – I know! Does it GET any more exciting! I am wondering if I can have a play in it before I go.

The French Drain wasn't as successful as we'd hoped.

I am also trying to calculate blogs left. At some point I am going to have to do a summary of my time in Malawi. I kind of keep putting it off  - I mean how do you sum up the whole year in a blog post! I don’t know  - but I think it will have to be next weeks post. The week after we go on holiday to Mozambique – hopefully still not booked yet – and the week after that is home time!

R-L Ichabod, Aubrey, MPhatso, Bosco, Moi, Zowani, Mphidza
Pangani, Jean

Team with supporters

Our new piece of art.

And so that was the week that was. 

STATMAN

Players on each team - 9

Total Goals - 8 (+4 penalties)

Muscles pulled - at least 3

Kilometers run - 13.5

Team Average - 10.5

Number of last man ditch clearances by me in the final - 7

Number of people congratulating me on my defending - 4

MTCC Supporters - 378

Other Supporters  -12

Number of blogs left - 3

Number of days left - 23