Tonight the Soccer Sixes league at Royal Docks started again. We were in the previous league that was run at the venue, but it only lasted 4 weeks before the league was cancelled due to how poorly it was being run. The league manager was replaced with a more experienced one who phoned me and assured me that this time it would be run more professionally and teams would actually turn up – and I actually believed him!
None of the Custom House players wanted to play because of what had happened in the past (4 weeks in a row our opponents failed to turn up) so I spent the day ringing around everyone I knew, posting on Facebook & Twitter, and I even posted an advert on a football player site to try and get 6 players.
I ended up getting 7 players confirmed and they all turned up at the venue 10 minutes before the game was due to start.
As I went to the car park to meet two of the players I noticed the ref and a lady were involved in a shouting match. The lady worked for the school and apparently there was a problem with the pitch booking and she was not happy with the way the ref was talking to her or the caretaker.
She was adamant that we would not be playing football tonight because of the way the ref was talking to her, by this time three other teams had turned up and me and another lad from one of the teams tried to talk to the lady, but she was having none of it and shouted again about how no football will be played on the pitch tonight.
She demanded that we leave the premises and I gave it one last shot at trying to reason with her, after all the four teams that had turned up had done nothing wrong. It wasn’t to be though, she yelled that we were just as much in the wrong for associating with the ref and then she looked at me and yelled that if my team were not off the premises within a couple of minutes she would call the police and have us all arrested for trespassing.
I don’t take too kindly to being threatened and someone from one of the other teams had an inkling that I was about to blow my top and moved into my path and spoke to me. Eventually we all walked off of the premises and I couldn’t stop apologising to the players I had gathered and they all said they understood and that it wasn’t my fault.
When I got home I received a notification from the football player site that someone had commented on my posting, I checked and saw that one of the players was lambasting me as being a clueless and delusional manager who wasted everyone’s time by dragging them across London. I was annoyed at someone saying this, especially as it was the same person who was very vocal about how it WASN’T my fault, I’m used to people hiding behind computers and insulting me and I’ll be seeing the cunt at a football game down the line somewhere.
Photo by mirko delcaldo from FreeImages
