Football

So I have done a rather poor job of writing new posts lately. For anyone who may actually follow this, I apologize. Unfortunately up until this point, nothing terribly exciting has really happened in terms of travel, aside from a trip to Stonehenge (which really isn't very exciting, personally) and Portsmouth (much better - museums, history, ships... pretty cool stuff, but no much really to write on). I plan to do some traveling soon, but for now I'll just talk about my experiences in regards to football (soccer).

It wasn't immediately that I was able to play. I was really quite anxious to get to play with some English kids in anticipation that, basically, everyone over here would be a decent player. Unfortunately, this wasn't exactly the case. In terms of knowledge of the game and following the professional level, yes, the people here are much more knowledgeable. I was talking with one of my flatmates one day about how much football was a part of his life. I explained how it was for myself as well, but the difference was primarily this: I love the game and follow it and appreciate it because I'm a player. He loves the game because he's grown up with it. It's been part of his culture for his entire life, and he isn't a player.

I'm fortunate enough and very thankful for the fact that a fellow player from the States is here with me and the BCA group, Corey. He plays for Manchester College (fellow D3 school in Indiana). At first, if I'm being honest, I wasn't sure what to expect from him, but once we finally got around to playing, it turned out he was, in fact, a good player. We've grown really close perhaps partially due to this commonality. That and we live next door to each other and spend most of our time with the same people.

Back to the topic of playing. Corey and I weren't sure how we were going to get involved with any sort of team. Initially we'd hoped to check out the university team (who are reigning national champions from what I understand), but sadly enough the team has been banned due to some inappropriate behavior (contact me if you're really interested). So we sort of resorted to intramurals, at least temporarily. We joined a team called Erasmus FC, which is some sort of European thing (obviously we're not European). It's mostly all international students - students from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Malaysia, Holland, and of course England. You'd think that as Americans we'd have a relatively small impact compared to these countries (apart from perhaps Malaysia :p), but in fact Corey and I probably have the most playing experience from what I gather. It's been good fun, but the level of play wasn't nearly what I was hoping to get while over here.

Fortunately, the coach of the university team was willing to help out our team. Long story short, he liked how I played and invited me to play on a local club team he coaches. I played in my first match for that team this past Saturday. It was night and day from intramurals. The players were bigger, faster, stronger, more technical on my team as well as the opposing side. It was about time! The only downside is that the fields here are simply in horrendous conditions. There's literally more mud than grass. In the end, it's very difficult to play on, but I'm hopeful that it'll just make me a better player. I was fortunate enough to start and play roughly 75 minutes and played fairly well, which helped in terms of being accepted by the other players. We won the match 2-0 to the team leading the league which put us in first place. Jim (coach) said he was interested in having Corey tag along as well, but is in a difficult position so he can't very well bring on more than one player at a time. Hopefully it'll work out. I look forward to continuing to play with this team.