Quite possibly the worst game I have ever watched.
I have to say, it's a good thing I'm already invested in the damn game, or this match would have sent me packing.
It was really, really boring - and the few bits that weren't boring were largely annoying. I can usually tell when a show is bad when I find myself paying more attention to the sets and rigging than the actors. This game I was reading the ads and looking at the speaker set up while the ball was still "in play" (if you could call it that).
For those of you who didn't watch it (and, I imagine, you number in the billions), it went a little something like this:
Kick, kick, kick the ball off the field. Stand around a bit until it gets thrown back in. Kick, kick, kick the ball of the field. Stand around a bit until it gets thrown back in. Wellington scores in the first eight minutes with a really boring goal. Kick, kick, kick the ball off the field. Stand around a bit until it gets thrown back in. Kick, kick, kick the ball to the goalkeeper who, for some unfathomable reason, kicks the ball to the other team - who then kick it off the field.
And so it went on for the next eighty minutes - nothing happened, and it didn't happen very often, either. A few times the Fury pretended to kick the ball towards the Phoenix's goal, but they either weren't really trying, or they really suck at this. At one point the little kid sitting near me cried out, "oh, they were so close!", and I just had to say: "No, no they weren't."
Once in a while something interesting would almost happen, but then someone on the opposite side of the field would fall down and clutch their knee or their side, and the referee would have to stop the game to go and see why the poor dear had fallen down. Then the boringness would resume.
At half time the reserves started warming up, and during the second half a few of them would try to keep themselves limber by doing some funny little dance down my end of the field. That was more interesting than what their team-mates were doing on the field.
Oh, and then Robby Fowler scored a goal and the entire crowd erupted. Not because it was a particularly brilliant goal or was particularly well executed, just because someone finally did something. Then things went back to being boring, until the penalty time started.
Finally, in the last four minutes of the match, they actually played like they cared if they won or not. People tried to keep the ball on the field. They tried to get it from one end of the field to the other. They tried to get a goal. There was a sense, in the air, that someone might actually score something and win this thing. Then the time ran out and it was just another draw.
In the end, it was all just frustrating and horrible. It was as though two teams who didn't have a hope of winning were playing each other because they had to, and not because they wanted to.
Honestly, I don't mind backing a losing team. I don't really care if the Fury are at the bottom of the league and keep getting put down match after match. The way I see it, the longer the fall, the sweeter the climb. When they finally win something - when they finally move just one rung up that latter, it will just make it all the more interesting.
However, it has to be said:
If you can't give us a win, at least give us a show.
We humans are fickle that way - we'll forgive you for being losers, but not for being boring.
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