Icebreaker living up to its name

The downside of (a) having an easy first day at a tournament and (b) going out for dinner afterwards and drinking flagons of red wine is that when the alarm goes for your inevitable 6:15 am start, you feel like crap. And so it was today. With an 8am kick-off for Ottawacker Jr.’s final group stage game, and a reasonable drive to get to Nepean’s Ben Franklin Fields for 7.30, we were none of us bright-eyed and bushy tailed.
 
After the warm-ups of Ottawacker Jr., we had the final game against Carleton Place FC. They were dispatched 4-1 (despite being a reasonably strong team). This was good and bad. Good, because I like to see the team doing well. Bad, because the weather had become even more wintry since yesterday. It was baltic. Cold and windy, wet and miserable. More like a beginning of March that the first day of June. And if we qualified for the knock-out stages, which we did, then we had plenty more of it to come.
 
But first warmth. Off we all decamped to a nearby mall, where instead of going to Tim Hortons, we thought we’d give Fitz's Classic Grill BBQ Smoke House a go: support small businesses and the like. However, obviously the sight of 25 people walking into a restaurant for coffee and perhaps breakfast threw them for a loop. They were panic-stricken. The restaurant was pretty much empty – just a couple of locals siting with coffee and the paper – but they wouldn’t seat us. “It’s Sunday,” said an unkempt server, “we’re really full.” They weren’t. Maybe it is all a cover for an illicit amphetamine factory – but the idea that a small restaurant would turn away 25 plates still leaves me scratching my head. Ottawa, never change.
 
So, we went to Tim’s. And predictably Timmyish it was.
 
Having qualified for the knock-out games, we found we were drawn again against OFC, the team we had a kerfuffle with yesterday in the semi-final. Great. But the game was well refereed, and the difference that made was plain to see. Although the score was only 1-0, it was a reasonably straightforward game (apart from a very late flurry which saw them hitting the crossbar and missing from close range). That put the Internationals into the final – against the Toronto FC Academy.
 
Debating whether to tell Ottawacker Jr. about the effectiveness of urinating on your hands to avoid frostbite (I didn’t), I warmed him up in a more traditional way (for the final time this weekend) for the 1pm final. The game ended 2-2, with the Internationals scoring a late, late equaliser (after the TFC Academy keeper had started doing his Jordan Pickford impressions to waste time: that was rather a sweet equaliser). The draw meant it went straight to penalties. Ottawacker Jr. made a very good save for their first one – but that was the final save… until the Internationals missed their final penalty. That took it to sudden death – and this time there was no happy end of the boys. They lost 4-3 on pens… Still, a bit of sporting misery never hurt anyone. For long. Look how happy SparseRunner is!
 
Home. Warmth. Sleep in the chair. Dinner. More sleep in the chair… We get to do the football thing al over again tomorrow…