I was definitely the intruder on the team. For one thing, I do not support Liverpool Football Club or have any real affection for them –I’m a Swansea fan through and through; and secondly, I’ve only written one article ever for Read Liverpool (and even that largely related to my specialist subject of Swansea City), although I argued that this surely made me eligible to play in Team TBT’s tournament debut at the Hillsborough Justice Campaign Cup. The first time I heard any mention of the competition was when I attended Liverpool’s U21 clash against their Arsenal counterparts at Anfield with some of the TBT gang. My lack of actually playing football has been killing me for a while, so with a chance to return to the pitch in front of me, I put my name forward for the TBT squad. My squad place was confirmed largely because I was one of the few people associated with TBT (slightly associated anyway) that lives in the North West of England (most the site is run by ‘wools’ as people seem determine to brand them). The self-proclaimed ‘Merthyr Messi’ was called up to the squad for the tournament on 18th May 2013.
As well as getting a chance to play organised football for the first time in ages, I was also more than happy to be putting money towards the Hillsborough Justice Campaign. Having lived in the city of Liverpool for a year and met people affected by the disaster, I have a lot of respect for those that have put in time and effort to improve the lives of those who suffered directly and indirectly from the disaster and their pursuit to clear the name of those wrongly accused of causing the tragedy.
Over the weeks building up the HJC Cup, Team TBT was assembled after negotiations through Twitter and Skype conversations and the final line up read as follows:
- Ste Hoare (captain)
- Jake Tolliday (goalkeeper)
- Jack Widnell
- Daniel Wilcox
- Adam Heayns
- Russell Wareing
- Matthew Harrison
- Lewis Dunwoody
After weeks of speculation, team talks and dreaming of cup glory, the big day arrived. 18th May 2013 – HJC Cup day. Along with fellow Manc dweller Dan Wilcox, I was travelling from my Manchester base to Liverpool via train. Having met up with Dan at Piccadilly station at 9am, we were walking out of Lime Street station before10am with the Liverpool cityscape ahead of us. As we stood opposite the elegant St George’s Hall, I had flashbacks to Liverpool’s 2005 Champions League victory parade, where thousands came to celebrate the victory with many hanging from buildings and lampposts to just to get a glimpse of their heroes; that could be Team TBT tomorrow I thought to myself – but maybe with a bigger crowd.
The first issue of the day arose when we realised that our goalkeeper, Jake (or Jake the Snake as I decided to name him), was arriving into Lime Street station, but we had no idea what he looked like. Thankfully, I spotted a lad with a kit bag on his back, who was wandering aimlessly and generally looking lost: this was our goalkeeper. After informing him that he was going to be called ‘Jake the Snake’ for the day for no real reason other than I thought it was a funny nickname, we spotted the team’s official coach – Ste’s car.
Following a brief pit stop to Albert Dock Travelodge to pick up the player many on Twitter were predicting would be our star signing – Jack Widnell – we made our way towards Crosby. Some excellent scouse roadway knowledge from Ste had us at the Play Football centre within twenty minutes and with us not getting lost once. However, we had arrived by 11am and the tournament kick off wasn’t until 1pm – a massive warm up awaited us, although I decided to dub it a ‘getting to know you’ session. The place itself was rather good with a whole host of 5 and 6-a-side pitches all adjacent to each other and all in good condition with good facilities indoors as well. Nice one Crosby’s Play Football.
As we took to one of the 6-a-side pitches to fine tune our first touches and practice our shooting, the rest of the team slowly began to show up and by 11:30am Team TBT were all together for the first time. In fact, many of us had never met before; I had been to watch a lot of non-league football with Lewis Dunwoody over the past year and had been to a couple of games with Dan and Ste, but Adam, Jack, Russ and Jake were all strangers to me. Fortunately, we all got on very well within minutes of meeting each other (although I had upset certain people in the team by insisting on wearing my Wales shirt complete with “BALE 11” on the back during our practice session) and it looked like we had a great day ahead of us.
Also showing promise in the warm up was the man between the sticks: Jake ‘The Snake’ Tolliday. Jake had barely spoken a word since we had met him at Lime Street station, but he was clearly in the zone; he was imperious, saving everything we threw at him. That was until I saw a ball flying high above and without thinking I delivered a Rivaldo-esque overhead kick that rocketed into the top corner. “I may as well just go home now after that” was my claim, but obviously this was merely ‘banter’ – I was definitely hanging around, although shortly after my exquisite acrobatic finish I skied a ball over our fence and onto the netting above another pitch. Perhaps I should have gone home.
Twitter had exploded hours before, as the fans of TBT waited to hear the answer to the question on everyone’s lips: Would Ste Hoare wear the captain’s armband that Dan had bought him? The answer was yes, as we coaxed our reluctant skipper to adorn the armband for our team photo, taken by our official photographer for the day (he had got the job minutes after arriving at the venue) Robert Wareing – Russ’ dad.
Introductions made, warm up completed, tactics discussed and flying overhead kicks scored (I had to mention it again), it was now time for the real deal as we waited anxiously for the fixture list to be compiled. Ste returned with our opponents and our group read as:
- TEAM TBT
- Redmen TV
- Sandstorm
- Bayer Neverloosin
- Wrighty’s Boys
The format worked as follows: every team in the group played each other once in a ten minute game (overhead height allowed, no slide tackles, players not allowed in the penalty box, goalie not allowed out of it – the usual) with the top 2 teams going through to the final tournament. The teams finishing in the 3rd and 4th spot in the group would go through to a lesser tournament or ‘The HJC Europa League’ as I called it. Of course, our eyes were firmly set on the glittering trophy at the end of the ‘real tournament’, but we would be happy to make the ‘Europa League’ and have a good go at that.
Our first opponents of the day would be Redmen TV, who informed us that they had had a practice match on the Thursday before, whilst we had only met each other hours before; as the game got underway it showed. In our first run out, we were truly awful and a bit all over the place. It took a couple of minutes for the Redmen to take the lead through a header of all things against our giant defender Dunwoody. Clearly, our talk of tactics had gone out the window as we panicked after going a goal down and soon enough we found ourselves 3-0. The highlight of our performance was one measly shot on target from Adam, who looked to have scored only for the Redmen keeper to dive low to his right to keep his fizzing shot out. Full time: Redmen TV 3-0 Team TBT.
Safe to say, that the first game was certainly a wake up call to us all, as we evaluated the game during our break from match action. Having developed a game plan (“just shoot every time you get it and follow the rebounds” – can’t imagine Brendan being too pleased with such a philosophy) we were ready for our second match of the competition, this time against Sandstorm. After starting the game much better than the previous, a defensive error saw us slip a goal behind and once again we lost our heads. Another goal followed another goal followed by another goal. We were hopeless. Jake the Snake was doing well to keep out one-on-ones, but he had no chance with all the goals that went past him – we were definition of schoolboy defending. Fatigue led to me coming off midway through and from the touchline actually lost count of how many goals we had conceded, but I was soon informed that the final score was Sandstorm 6-0 Team TBT. Oh dear. Back to the drawing board.
From our first two outings, we had highlighted Jack Widnell as the most accomplished footballer out of the lot of us (although it was an easily earned title from what we had seen from our team so far) and we decided that he was wasted in the striker role we had played him in for the first two games. Widnell dropped back for our third game and we seemed to be playing much better. Everyone was disappointed with the early showings and everyone worked their arses in that third game against Bayer Neverloosin. Our efforts were eventually rewarded as a quick turn from Adam opened space for him to fire in from just in front of the halfway line. 1-0 Team TBT! Adam ran off celebrating and he was soon soaring through the air as he performed a flying fish dive à la Luis Suarez; everyone on the touchline watching the game was in absolute hysterics! The height he got on the dive was quite incredible and following the game Adam admitted that he had actually really hurt his shoulder performing the celebration.
With the team 1-0 up I entered the action and thanks to a great pass from Widnell I was through on goal; initially I thought I’d cocked up and left my shot too late, but just in time I flicked a left foot out and volleyed the ball through the goalie’s legs. 2-0 to Team TBT as I ran off performing the ‘Swim Away’ – an action Swansea fans perform to incite Cardiff fans thanks to an incident in the early 90s where Swansea fans chased their rival fans onto Swansea beach only for the Bluebird fans to jump into Swansea bay and attempt to ‘Swim Away’ from them.
Bayer Neverloosin were losing and they really didn’t like it, as they began arguing with each other. With 4 minutes left we tried to instigate time wasting tactics, but Bayer were determined now. Once again, after the opposition had grabbed a goal back, we lost our heads and began giving the ball away far too easy. Eventually, Bayer equalised and soon our comedy defending kicked in again as our opponents somehow scored directly from one of our kick offs. The game finished 4-2 to Bayer Neverloosin. We were all gutted. We bottled our best chance of winning, although some dodgy refereeing (or lack of) didn’t help our cause.
Next up was Wrighty’s Boys and with some of the team wearing Everton attire the team was determined not to lose to them. Same old story: early goal to the opposition and then defensive meltdown. We found ourselves 5-0 down, but skipper Ste grabbed a late consolation with a fine left foot finish that went in off the post to make the game 5-1, which would be the final score.
With the group stages finished, we headed into the bar area and awaited to hear our fate. Only some sort of mathematical miracle or some cock up with admin would mean we would go through to the next round. Yet, we still waited for the final word. As we finished off the arsenal of Powerade that Adam had brought along and which was kindly donated by Lancashire Cricket club (I think that’s right anyway), Ste emerged with news.
“Right, I’ve got good news and bad news for you. We’re out.”
“Well what’s the good news?” I enquired.
“We’re not the only team that is out” Ste answered.
Cheers for that bit of glorious good news Ste. As we took the news in, we all began to discuss what the future held for Team TBT. Speculation had begun on Twitter that there was unrest amongst the players and that the players felt there was lack of leadership from the skipper after he refused to wear the armband during the matches. Twitter sparked to life with #SteHoareOut spreading through the Team TBT support. I can confirm now that Team TBT’s dressing room was a harmonious one and we all got along great. Ste even ensured that he had the lads fully backing him for the future by buying the first round of drinks of the day. That action from Ste led to us all turning to Twitter (our skipper is easy going with his players’ use of social media) to express our backing for the skipper – #KeepHoareIn. We decided to turn on the people behind the website instead (I’m looking at you Harry Hugo), accusing them of not providing enough time and resources to develop a title challenging team. Just like Brendan and Liverpool, we decided that our first foray into the HJC Cup was a campaign of transition and we had learned a lot from our experiences. We are a young team still learning. We’ll be back next year.
With the football done for the day (congratulations to Rockstar Rovers for winning the HJC Cup for the second year in a row) there was only one issue left to resolve: where were we going for the Team TBT social night out? I can tell you now, that our performance were much better off the field on the night out than on the on the field, especially our impressive tequila drinking efforts in Cava. Well played in that department lads.
Overall, results aside of course, I had a great day at the HJC Cup and it was a pleasure to play alongside such good lads. However, most importantly it was great to give money towards the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, a worthy cause if ever there was one. Well done to all involved with organising the tournament.
