Earlier this month BWFC was represented by no less than FIVE teams in the Browns over 60’s Walking football Cup tournament in Portugal. Twenty teams took part in the four day event with BWFC Green team taking home the trophy! Congratulations to ALL the players who traveled and represented the club abroad.
BWFC GREEN – 1ST, BWFC YELLOW – 6TH, BWFC BLUE – 8TH, BWFC PURPLE – 18TH, BWFC ORANGE – 20TH
The following report is written by player Theo Theobald.
That was the week that was…
Before the moment slips away completely, I just thought I’d try and capture a few personal reminiscences of our great Algarve adventure and maybe a little of the essence of the trip overall.
When we set off, who’d have thought we would return having topped and tailed the table, with a smattering of other teams in between and to a man (and Sue) I heard nothing but great pride in the cumulative achievement. Of course winning was great (well done Greens), but we showed that BWFC embraces the greatest spirit in sport, that of taking part. We’re a club that truly values diversity, above winning at all costs and should take credit for that.
If sheer willpower had played a part in Orange scoring or progressing, the opposition would have stood no chance; you could feel the surge of support on the touchline, well done one and all for that.
As for my own beleaguered team, gentlemen it was a pleasure! I should have expected to bond with fellow itinerant scouser Kevin, but to my great relief we all got on like a house on fire, brim-full of pluck and spunk we were. At seventy something our ‘voice of experience’ was Rick, still displaying the mischief of a 7 year old boy and lulling the opposition into a false sense of security with his mock Private Godfrey impersonation.
Off pitch memories are too numerous to detail here, but I have no doubt the stories will be told and re-told, growing in magnitude and shrinking in truthfulness as time goes by. The victors were our stars and memorable quotes from the trip include Ken’s ‘I’ve never won anything’, it was genuinely touching. Which of us will ever forget ‘TwoEurosCassano’ and his T-shirt distribution methodology, which had all the well-thought-outedness of a Brexit plan. Roger’s laconic modesty and Mark’s mild mannered dressing room persona Dr Jekyll, who on stepping over the white line morphed into Mr Hyde, ready to bite the legs of any referee who crossed him! (Subsequently it turned out that Mr Hyde had an incredible capacity for red wine that Dr Jekyll was left to deal with the following morning).
Other highlights? The boat trip with the 3 stooges, or should that be the 3 boozers, Paul, Roff and Clive, I later heard 2eurosCass regaling people with tales of how ‘they drunk the boat dry!’ who cares if it’s true or not?
Mike and the attempted compensation claim, told and re-told firstly with genuine concern as to his well being, then as a scene from a Charlie Chaplin movie with the poor fella the butt of the joke; is it true that even as he went down he was still reciting Burnley football teams from the 1970s?
A massive amount of laughs and p*** taking, too great in volume to do justice to, but typified by Pete and Martin (BTW has anyone managed to work out which one is which yet?) the thinking men’s Statler & Waldorf, heckling each other and anyone within their orbit.
The people’s comedian Brendan Glyn with an endless stream of awful gags he’s collected from a lifetime’s worth of Christmas Crackers. He showed he could be genuinely funny though, which makes you wonder why he doesn’t do it more often. The best line of the holiday was ‘That referee couldn’t get to sleep last night…so he had to start counting Mark’s penalties…’
For all of you, whether name-checked here or not, thanks a million; the last word goes to Sue, our very own testament to girl-power.
Some time over the next 12 months you’ll be driving along and the car radio will start blasting out ‘Sweet Caroline’. When it does, I defy you not to have a picture in your mind’s eye of Sue’s rendition. You know that bit when she punches the air in rhythm to the music, it sums up Algarve 2019. In case you’d forgotten, it goes like this…
So good, so good, so good!
