The FA People’s Cup is a special day in the COGS’ calendar as it’s the one day of the year that everyone has in their diary (except Karen Jupp this year, as she forgot and booked a skiing holiday!) as a day we celebrate being together and being able to play football. It’s a day spent with new friends made through the power of football and getting women together who you may not have even met prior to playing. It’s also a day that ends up in the pub!
On Saturday 23rd February, 7 teams of COGS, over 35, headed to Tolworth Goals, 6 competing in the Female Vets’ Competition and 1 in the new category of Women’s Walking Football, which allowed women 40+ to play.
Professional photographs courtesy of James Boardman – Telephoto Images.
It was also a special day, as it was the first time we all got to wear our new tracksuit tops and there were a lot of them! 48 to be precise. Trying to get all 67 women together in their new tops, at any one time, may be slightly impossible but we were delighted how they turned out and pleased that we were able to subsidise them from money raised from our successful Quiz Night.
As Tolworth Goals had other activities going on during the day and they were the only local venue to host Vets & Walking, we were the only teams who were able to enter the Vets Competition there, so it ended up with everyone playing each other! The Walking category had 3 entries, a team from the Palace 4 Life Foundation and a team of former players who played together 15 years ago, call the Allsorts. It was also a day of debuts for some of our COGS, as it was the first time they had played in competitive games.
After hearing the laughter and camaraderie from all the teams in the group stage, the top two COGS teams played each other in the Final in the Vets. There were some great moments captured by James Boardman of Telephoto Images, as you can see below!
The Final was held between COGS ONE and COGS TWO, with COGS ONE winning, to progress to the semi-finals at Wimbledon Goals on the 23rd March. The Walking Football team came Runner’s Up to the Palace 4 Life Foundation team.
It’s fantastic to see Women’s Recreational Football, which includes Walking Football, flourish with Competitions like this, which are free to enter and are for any amateur players. We would definitely recommend booking the weekend of the 23rd/24th February off for 2020. Hopefully, Juppy has that in her diary already!
