Staff Writer Richan Drever provides an overview of the Men’s and Women’s Varsity matches that took place on 26 March at the SkyEx Community Stadium.
After a frankly very tumultuous Varsity series, there was hope in the air as both the players and the fans hoped to flip the script and take home the spoils in the penultimate Varsity event.
The women’s team kicked off first, but things started drastically wrong with early pressure from UCL taking the players off guard, leading to an early goal. Riding on this early confidence, the opposition continued to push hard. However, this was not the case for very long. After a couple of failed attempts, the Reds managed to break the line before a messy tackle from UCL gave away a penalty to KCL. This was calmly slotted away from number 23, making the match all to play for.
The intensity of the game only increased with the momentum shifting to King’s. This was further spurred on by the lack of energy from the UCL supporters, who were fairly tame in their support throughout the first half. Sadly, however, their players did still put up a good fight, taking a 2-1 lead early in the second half, after a blunder by the King’s keeper. Unlike the first half, the momentum did stay with UCL, eventually leading them to score two more goals. The fourth goal, annoyingly for the Reds, was a particularly impressive display of football, where the attacker skinned the defender before squaring it and putting it on a plate for their striker. At full time, the score was 4-1 to UCL, not the best of days for our players.
The Men’s match started as a cagey affair, with both teams immediately at each other’s throats. It was clear there was a fair share of animosity between both sides, with multiple aggressive tackles and 50-50 challenges. Simply put, the first half could be described as one of close misses, with the best chance coming from the Reds before the first half whistle, where King’s winger dragged his shot just wide of the far post.
The second half was more of the same, with both sides trading blows. The half saw semantics and multiple cries for fouls from UCLFC as their players took to the ground on multiple occasions. Alas, they did end on the lucky side, with UCL eventually breaking the deadlock. After a close King’s attack, UCL managed to break quickly on the counter before simply placing it in. Whilst very unlucky for the Reds, it rejuvenated the UCL crowd, finally bringing about concerted cheers from their supporters’ end. With very little time left, they managed to hold on to the final whistle, with the match ending in a 1-0 victory for UCL.
The high hopes of KCLFC players and fans were sadly not matched on the day, with both teams upsettingly losing to their counterparts. Both sides fought valiantly and left everything out there. With many freshers playing on both sides, the future looks bright as they will be hoping to avenge this loss next year.
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