The F.A. Cup

I did something for the first time on the weekend. I stayed up until some ridiculous hour to watch a soccer match. Not just any match they tell me, but the FA Cup. I’ve had a quick lesson on what all the Soccer (or Football) competitions around Europe are and what is their significance. The FA Cup is apparently one of the biggest. It is a Knockout competition featuring teams from all English competitions.

The teams playing off this year were Liverpool and West Ham. Immediately I had a dilemma as I had initially adopted Liverpool as my team because their colour was red, the same as the Swans. However, West Ham are nicknamed The Hammers, so they are, I guess, my sentimental favourites.

The match itself ebbed and flowed, mainly ebbed. There were enough goals to satisfy my appetite, but only half of them were very good. The other half were very lucky. Two of Liverpool’s goals came from their captain, Steve Gerrard, who had won the Player’s Player award from the Football Association. They were the best strikes of the ball I have ever seen, simply pure skill.

The only real fan of either of the teams, Nathan, was up and down out of his seat like a yo yo. I was about to tell him to calm down when I realised that that is what I looked like back in September last year when Sydney won the AFL Premiership.

The match finished at 3 all, even after 30 minutes of extra time. Unfortunately that means that the game was decided by penalty shots. I say unfortunately because it is such a cruel way to lose. But there has to be a winner, and when you play a game where it is so hard to score you need a simple way to break the deadlock.

There is so much pressure on the players taking a shot at what appears to be an easy task. When you take into account the 2 hours of game time as well as the 90,000 strong crowd singing songs and cheering, this was going to be no easy task. It showed on the faces of the West Ham players. They never looked confident and unsurprisingly missed 3 of their 4 penalty shots. Liverpool slotted 3 and that was all the difference.