Sakhalin Sokoli

Anyone who knows me knows that I've never really been a big fan of football. I like to watch the big games and world cups and the like manage to stir up a little bit of patriotism in me, but other than that I'm not really a big fan. However, we manage to pull together a team of enthusiastic guys at work for a weekly kick around in the local park (Westbroekpark in Den Haag is our training ground) during the summer time when the evenings are a little longer.

Given that there's only 70-80 employees in our office and that less then half this number are in any sort of condition to do hard physical exercise, we still manage to pull together a full squad of players. To test our competitiveness, we organised a friendly game the other week against another local expat team that play at the Den Haag PGS Vogels club. We were a little daunted when we arrived at their ground the other week... they have their own proper pitch along with a clubhouse and several professional changing rooms. The club hosts about nine men's teams (along with a couple of women's) and we thought we were pitching up to play their nineth team. However, it turned out that we were playing twoof their teams, the first in the first half and the second in the second half. This wasn't really fair, since it meant that we'd be playing a totally fresh team in the second half, plus this was our first full time game on a full size pitch.

So it came as no suprise that we lost 4-1. However, we put up some good opposition, taking the first goal with a penalty and holding the first team to 1-1 in the first half. Towards the end of the second half we were exhausted and inevitably let in two late goals. But we were proud of our performance, as were our opposition who have subsequently offered to allow us to utilise their pitch for future games against third party opposition! Or maybe that had more to do with our generosity in the clubhouse after the game?

Anyway, above is a picture of me playing down the left wing and below is a team picture before the match. I went for run yesterday and was suprised at my performance... seems the social football is having a positive effect on my health as well as being a pleasant way of spending one evening per week.