If it is a wet miserable Saturday morning, it has provided me with an opportunity to catch up on a few loose ends one of which is the wrap up of the U8-11 World Cup Day held nearly a fortnight ago. Yes I know a bit slack but May has been a very busy month for the Committee at Rebels and I for one am glad that it is behind us.

As most will recall, we also had the Club Photo Day on the 20^th May and also had top compete with the Sanitarium Weetbix Kids TRYatholan so it was always going to be a huge day.

Similar to the U5-7 World Cup Games, some teams went through undefeated winning all there games but unfortunately once again, due to all the novelty events those teams didn’t get into the age group finals as I keep saying it isn’t about winning but participation and fun.

Congratulations to the eventual winners of each age group who have become the 2012 World Cup Club Champions for their age groups:

U8 Spain (Ratbags)

U9 Africa (Ramblers)

U10 Australia (Reptiles)

U11 Spain and Scotland (Rangers with some help from others)

Congratulations must also go to the U9 Netherlands (Rulers) team who won their first ever World Cup Game in 3 years. That one win along with their bonus points from the novelty events (and the bribe – just goes to show that corruption is from FIFA all the way down to grassroots level J ) found them competing in their first ever final series but unfortunately for them they went down 3-2 with the winning goal being scored in the last 30 seconds of the game. With regards to the bribe, well all I will say is that it was good to see that people actually read the rules in their entirety however the joke was on me when they advised me as they were walking out the gate that it wasn’t scotch and in fact team in a scotch bottle. All I will say is that at the end of the day, the 10 bonus points I gave them didn’t account towards anything as they would have been in the final anyway and I look forward to our Senior Teams Trivia Night as the Netherlands Team officials are also our Club Sponsors, Adam and Kim Wilmen from Adrenalin Plus Paintball so, I guess there won’t be any favours given at the trivia night – good luck finding a team guys J

Commiserations to other players and teams but I’m sure from the cheering and supporting that I heard on the day everyone had fun except for when the odd shower went across L It was also great to see that everyone got into the spirit of things by wearing their countries colours and decorating their marquees.

Also just a quick thank you to the U11 Spain and Scotland teams. These teams consisted of the U11 Rangers team plus a few extra players that wanted to participate. They gladly split the team in half and played against each other representing Spain and Scotland which also help out the U10 competition as there were only 2 x U10 teams competing. The Spain / Scotland games were hotly contested and at the end of the day, both games they played against each other resulted in both games being drawn so I couldn’t have wished for a better outcome.

On a final note, thank you to all the coaches and managers who assisted on the day, without your leadership and assistance, these days wouldn’t have been half the success they are.