Now that I've hit the big 3-0 and I'm the 3rd oldest dude on our team, I've had to move back from midfield (outside right) to defense due to not being as fast and not having as much gas in the tank. Our team plays a 4-4-2, which means 4 defenders (sweeper, left full, right full, stopper), 4 midfielders (outside left, inside left, inside right, outside right) and 2 forwards (strikers). Our first game we tied the team and our second game we lost. By the time the second game rolled around most of my team was spent and some of the guys had to leave, so we were down to 2 subs. Our opponent during our 2nd game was a fresh out of college group of rugby players who decided to play soccer. These guys had little to no skill, but were much faster, bigger and in better shape than our team. Plus that was their first game of the day, whereas my team was on our 2nd game in 4 hours. The game was pretty rough and physical overall and finally someone on my team snapped. A scrum ensued and a guy on my team and a guy on their team started to throw punches. People on both teams came running in to break it up and unfortunately I was one of the first guys in there. Never again will I attempt to break up a fight since both parties involved are too fixated on the fight to see/care what is going on. The guy on my team elbowed me in the ear pretty hard when cocking back to throw a punch. The other guy missed throwing a punch at my teammate and hit me on the shoulder. 4 seconds later a guy from their team tried to tackle me because he thought I was the 3rd man in and my ankle rolled big time. You’d think a rugby player could perform a clean tackle that would just take me off my feet and onto the ground, but this d-bag must’ve been a bench player as his running start tackle to me quasi took me down and was awkward enough for me to twist/turn my ankle. I'd like to thank the Brad-Man for teaching me how to use a Rear Naked Choke move, which I lightly employed on this dude until the whole thing broke up and calmed down.
The sad part of the whole story is that 6 of their guys were tossed from the game and my team played the last 8 minutes 11 guys versus 9 of their guys (2 man Power-play, basically). We only lost the 1 guy who was throwing punches in the original scrap since the refs knew our team and could tell we were mostly legit soccer players, smaller dudes who were interested in fighting. Me personally, I was done for the day due to the ankle and just left the game early heated. Today my ankle is swollen and black and blue. Saturday and Sunday I had a headache/earache from the elbow to the ear and my right arm has a giant old woman bruise on it now. Needless to say I’m not going to join the team for the fall league and emailed one of my buddies today about joining the 30 and over league. Time to admit I’m too old for this crap. Who knew soccer could get so rugged? Obviously none of these guys have been watching the UEFA Euro 2012 matches on ESPN where a guy farts and another guy 5 feet away from him falls over like he has just been shot. I need to start playing soccer with Europeans.
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