A New Winner Has Been Crowned!

This past weekend the Mere Green football tournament has once again took place at Sutton United, with 4 teams battling it out to gain the ultimate bragging rights in the gym aswell as the chance to take the trophy home!

Teams made up of staff and members, which included semi pro and current professional footballers were put together and played in a round robin league table where they played eachother twice, with the top 2 teams playing in a final one off game as well as 3rd vs 4th in an entertaining warm up final!

The group stage very quickly showed how close the teams were, with Ben's Blue team getting beat by the strong favourite Red team, lead by James 4-1 while on the other pitch Rory's White team conceded a last second goal to steve's Black team to lose 2-1, but going into the second game the blue team then hammered the black team 3-0 while the white team went on to beat the red team, handing them their first loss of the tournament, this also meant that 2 games in, everyone had won once and lost once! In the final game of the first round, the blues then went on to beat the white team 1-0 in a very closely contested game, while the red team beat the black team 6-3 in the highest scoring game of the tournament!

Moving on to the second round of games, with the red's and blues on 4 points and the whites and blacks on 2 points each. The first games threw up another big win for the reds over the blues, winning 3-1 while the whites beat the blacks on the other pitch showing it could be anybody's game over the 2 legs! in the penultimate group game, the blacks came out swinging against the blues, beating them 2-1 thanks to a missed penalty with the last kick of the game, and the reds carry on their dominant streak by narrowly beating the white team 1-0.

This meant going into the final game, the red team were through to the final on 8 points, with the 3 teams behind all sat on 4 points, the whites on a -1 goal difference, the blues on a -2 and the blacks on a -5. The blues played the whites in what they knew would be a winner takes all game, and in a game of very few chances the blues goalkeeper coming up for a set piece in the final 30 seconds actually getting the best chance of the game but putting it narrowly wide of the post! This then meant that the game finished 0-0 being the only draw of the tournament and putting the white team through to the final against the reds who had a good warmup beating the black team 4-1 in their final group game!

Once the group stage was all said and done, it meant we had the strong favourite red team going into the final after only losing to the white team once, but it would once again be them they faced in the final. After a cagey first half that ended 0-0 the game started to come to life a little bit as the red team scored straight from the start of the second half! This then brought the white team to life as they then hit straight back and started to find their stride, with team captain Rory nearly breaking the net with the strike to make it 2-1 and with minutes to go and the red team trying to attack the game to take it to penalties, a player from the white team took it upon themselves to take a shot from inside his own box, lobbing it over the red team goalkeeper to make it 3-1 and seal the game for the white team!

Congratulations to Rory and his team on the win!