Emirates Stadium - move over Henry, some decent footballers want to play!!

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At Barclays we’ve got a regular Tuesday lunchtime 5 a-side slot, and quite a few of the players, (not myself obviously!), play to a very high standard. Thus whenin the springtime Barcalsy began to advertise their “Global 5 a-side football tournament” with a grand final to be played at the Emirates tadium we pricked up our ears!

To get through to the grand final you had to come in the top 2 at one of the six regional finals. Twelve British based teams would make it through to the Emirates from the heats,to be joined by a further twelve team which had qualified from the participating countries around the world which included South Africa, Spain, Italy, Tanzania, Portugal and Ireland.

But first we had to qualify, and a stroke of managerial genius from Terry Knappet led to us eschewing the more local London heats, where head offices are based and competition would surely be fierce, to jaunt down to Bristol and try our hand at the heats being held there.

Our prediction came true and we ended up booking our passage through to the final - and thus ensuring qualification for the Emirates as one of the Top 2 teams - relatively comfortably, with a 4-0 win in the semis and a goal difference boosting 11-nil win in the group stages! The final was a far tougher affair but a couple of fine strikes meant that Terry, Simon, Dan, Lee, Michael and I, along with the then injured Allan, would be heading to the Emirates as winners of the Bristol heat!

Barclays had provided us with a £250 bursary to cover travel costs, so we snared a travel lodge in Kings Cross on the Friday night and at the stroke of 4 we were scooting out of the office and on the train to the big smoke. Getting to London so early on a Friday night with an important tournament the following morning would probably prove to be a slight faux-pas in hindsight, as the planned “couple of quiet drinks and a bite to eat” suddenly morphed into something more resembling a night out in London!! However, it was great fun to enjoy a few drinks and a meal out with the team and early the next morning we were up and (pretty much) raring to go!!

The day’s events at the Emirates were being hosted from the Highbury suite, largest of the stadium’s corporate hospitality suites. Amongst the plush surroundings were kept replicas of the Premiership trophy and FA cup, however the genuine Premiership trophy was also in attendance, and it was this which we were all playing to win, as it would be presented to the winning team by Paul Merson at the end of the final!

As you can see from the pictures, the main Emirates pitch had been divided up into four smaller (but still not all that small!) pitches with inflatable barriers, and each of the four groups would play all of their games on one particular pitch. We were fortunate enough to have the first game and it meant that we got to play on the pitch before any other team had had a chance to scuff it up!! The playing surface one fantastic, especially when I’m used to playing my footy down at the Old Basing rec!! The ball fizzed across the surface beautifully, and any time we played a longer ball, it skipped along off the pitch just as you’d wish!

Our first match was against some of the strongest opposition we’d face all day, a team called “Loose Cannons” or “The Green Team” as we always referred to them. Despite being under pressure for long periods, Simon produced a clinical finish to see us through 1-0, and we followed up that initial win with two more and a draw to leave us undefeated at the end of the group stage. Despite us never really having played our best football, we had comfortably topped our group and were looking forward to the quarter finals.

One of the billed attractions of the day out at the Emirates was that we would be able to watch the FA Cup final in either the Highbury suite or out in the stadium on the big screens. However, Simon had tickets of his own for the final, and frustrating delays at the start of the day had meant that the tournament was running well behind schedule. Thus, Simon had to leave before the quarter final stage in order to make the dash across North London and take his seat at Wembley.

Even with the loss of one of our most influential players, we were still confident of progression, however it was not to be as we came out of the blocks slowly against the fantastically named “Inter Christina Milian” and soon found ourselves 2-0 down. We pressed hard to get back into the game and I was the unlikely scorer of the goal which brought us back to 2-1! As we attacked, searching for the equaliser which would surely bring us to penalties and a chance at the semis, we created several chances but were just unable to take them, and the final whistle brought an end to our adventure at the quarter final stage.

It was a slightly disappointing end for a team that had won each of the two previous tournaments it had entered into, but the experience and memories we take away from the day were just incredible. It was a truly unique opportunity to get the chance to football at a location such as the Emirates, and I can only imagine how it must be to play on such a stage in front of 60,000 people, rather than the 600 or so we had watching us - of which probably 25 were cheering us on!!

The eventual winners of the tournament were The Green Team we had beaten in our first group game, so we were able to take some consolation from the fact that we had beaten the overall winners of the tournament!!

Cheers to all the other members of the BASF Finance team for making our journey to the Emirates via Bristol such a blast, and thanks to all the guys who came down to support us. Who knows - there’s always next year!

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