Four players from Sassco out of a squad of six took part on the behalf of Azure-design.com in the PowerLeague Five-a-side Cup in Gateshead. The players involved were Davinder Sangha (in goal replacing the much poorer Ed Cook) Chris Dixon, Dave Gourlay and Jimmy Raeper. The other two player were ex-Sunderland AFC’s Martin Smith and Sammy Bindoff. Martin Smith everyone knows about, but Sam could be described as a ultra skillful Tim Gillespie. Posh sort, etc.
It was two groups of four and I think we were in the strongest group. In the event, we won the first game 7-3, while we lost the second to a team featuring ex-Boro player, Dean Gordon. Also, Gourlay got sin-binned for four minutes and the loss was a 3-2 one. Finally, we hammered a team featuring a Times Inn player, 9-0, to make sure we were through to the Semi Finals.
The Semi Finals pitted us against a team which we truly hammered 6-1. Ironically, Dean Gordon’s lot got easily dismissed in the other Semi Final, so our Final opponents were put to the sword and we won 4-2 – being 3-0 up at one stage.
The comprehensive domination embarrassed the Azure Technical Director, Peter Daykin (who once donned a Sassco shirt back in 2006), as he fully expected a team containing me to be easily defeated. Got to be honest – I was like a cat between the sticks, despite slowly being cooked alive in the weather proof goalkeeper top, which is more suited to the sub-artic temperatures at Downhill.
The tournament was well organised, but the way some of the teams were kitted would have given me a heart attack if it happened on a Tuesday. Mind you, Dixon looked like a tramp and only the special powers of Photoshop make him look half decent in the photo above (a better quality pic will be added soon).
Paul McConville and Wayne Ramsay had their version of the Tuesday team in, but they failed to reach the Semi Finals.
