UCC club holds inaugural futsal Cup

At the start of this month, our club organised the first ever Futsal Cup on the 3rd February in the Mardyke Arena. The event was in aid of the CUH Charity, and it was a great success. UCC students took great interest in the competition, with over 50 participants and over €200 raised. The event itself consisted of 8 teams, making up 2 groups of 4 teams. This tournament structure led to highly competitive group games, with the top 2 teams in each proceeding to the semi-finals and the chance to face off in the all-important final.Thanks to incredible interest in the tournament, we decided to hold Group A in the morning and Group B in the afternoon, with the knockout stages held after a lunch break, in order to best facilitate the competitions running time. From group A, ‘Bits’ and ‘Battler’s Army’ managed to come out on top with impressive wins over the unfortunate ‘Joga Bonito’ and ‘The RAMmen’, who crashed out at the group stage. The group itself was refereed by Oliwier Melon, with fellow committee members Dylan Bradley and Aidan O’Sullivan ensuring the event ran smoothly by time and score keeping, as well as promoting the event on social media, taking photos and providing equipment for the participants such as bibs, gloves etc.Group B began at 1:30, with Aidan O’Sullivan the referee this time around. This group (consisting of ‘Guys being Dudes’, ‘Kroos Control’, ‘Blink One Eto’o’ and ‘Electrical Engineering’) turned out to be the more competitive group with plenty of action. After the group coming right down to the last match where all 4 teams could still qualify, it was ‘Guys being Dudes’ and ‘Kroos Control’ that eventually came out on top after a tight penalty shoot-out separating the two sides.At 4 o’clock, it was time for the semi-finals with ‘Bits’ facing off against ‘Kroos Control’ and ‘Guys being Dudes’ coming up against ‘Batter’s Army’. For the knockout stages, Oliwier Melon teamed up with Aidan O’Sullivan to referee and ensure that each match was carried out in the fairest way possible, and the deserved winner coming out on top. After two hotly-contested matches, ‘Bits’ and ‘Battler’s Army’ each won their respected semi-final.After a short water break for both teams, the final was ready to be played. It only took ‘Bits’ two minutes to pull into a 1-0 lead and throughout this very tight final, it seemed like that was how it would finish. That was up until a crazy last 5 minutes where ‘Battler’s Army’ pulled it back to 1-1 with only 3 minutes to go, only for ‘Bits’ to grab a 2-1 lead with a fantastic break-away goal with one of the last kicks of the game.Congratulations to ‘Bits’ for winning the first ever Futsal Cup, and thank you to all the teams that entered and made the day such a success.