Awaji Tournament

Osaka Jet football team

Big beers and dinner on the Saturday night

A couple of weekends ago we had our big soccer tournament on Awaji island. The Saturday morning started off just after 5 in the morning because we were all getting the 6.30am ferry. Our first game of the day was at 10am I think, so we basically arrived pissed around for a bit setting up etc, and then were straight into it. Our first game of the day we won 4-0, then we had a break of around an hour which we used to play cricket and soak up the sun. The second game was a hard fought 2 all draw, and then on to penalties - we ended up winning 7-6 on penalties, it was pretty tense. The last game of the day was a 1-0 loss to Hiroshima, we were unlucky it probably should of ended 0-0 but the referee confused our goalie by telling him to hurry up with his kick, and our goalie thought he wanted the ball, so he rolled it out towards him and then the opposing striker ran through and scored (so a bit unlucky). The girls were playing on the field right next to us so during our breaks we would go over and support them and vice versa. I didn't get to see Danielle's goal though as we were playing, but I hear it was really good (left foot even). After the day of soccer we headed for our hotel and had dinner and onsen to relax the aching muscles. Then we all set off for the pub where the social was being held. It was a good night of banter and beers. Bright and early the next day we were up having breakfast, not really my ideal start to the day having a Japanese breakfast of rice, pickles, miso soup and other stuff that you didn't even want to touch at that time of the day, what ever happened to good old cereal and toast aye!!! But anyway we set off for the soccer ground because we were kicking off at 9.30, we were playing the team from the day before that we beat 4-0. They played a lot better than the previous day and we ended up winning 1-0. So now we were through to the quarter final against Hyogo. Hyogo are a fairly strong team with a bit of speed up front, and they scored a couple of good goals and won the game 2-0, so that was that knocked out in the quarter final again same as the winter tournament. We were pretty happy with the way we had played though, so now we could go and cheer n the girls!! They played really well throughout both days and were unlucky to lose the semi final on penalties. It was a great weekend of soccer, beers and sun, can't wait for the next one in winter.