Football

Last night, Kevin, Ryan, and myself ventured downtown to The Gatehouse, a hotel bar-esque pub filled with middle aged men wearing sweaters and blazers. The reason for this was that there was a sweet gypsy jazz trio playing, comprised of two guitarists with an upright bass. Needless to say, the jazz was sweet, featuring a lot of really cool arrangements of some classic tunes. It was also a very enlightening evening, in the fact that we gained a much deeper understanding of English football, courtesy of David and Philip Juggins. The Juggins are the neighbors to the Luther directors, so they have a long history with the program. Philip is their kid, who's going for a masters at the University. They're all really cool. Anyways, they were at the bar as well, and sat down and talked with us. The conversation turned to soccer, and they imparted much wisdom upon us. Here's the deal. English soccer is administered by the Football Association (FA). There are 4 main leagues, the Premiership, the Champions League, the Coca-Cola League 1, and the Coke League 2, with the Premiership being the top league. Respectively, there are 20, 20, 24, and 24 teams in each league. Each year, the three bottom teams in the Premiership are "downgraded" to the Champions League, while the top three in that league take places in the Premiership. This same system works for every level in the system. Also, the FA has leagues that basically go down to the local level. So, theoretically, you could start a team with you friends just playing pick up soccer, and progress your way up to the Premiership. Apparently, this actually happened some time ago with Wimbledon, who went from nothing to playing Manchester United. David compared this to a baseball team from Decorah ending up playing the Yankees in the World Series. So, it's pretty intense competition, all the time.

The local team in Nottingham is Nottingham Forest. In 1979-1980, Forest was literally the best football club in Europe, winning the European Cup two consecutive years. The European Cup, now known as the Champions League (different from the one previously mentioned), is like the World Cup for club teams. Nottingham is a small city compared to the teams that usually win, so it was an amazing achievement. Since then however, Forest has fallen down to League 1, which also gives them the distinction of being the only former European champion to play in a third class league. Still, it's a big deal. Nottingham is currently in first place in the league, seperated by two points from Bristol. So, if they continue to play well, they could be back in the Champions League next year. It was cool to hear from David, who was born in Nottingham and is a lifetime Forest fan. He apparently was watching them when they were pretty much the best team in the world. Forest football runs as much in their family as Twins baseball runs in mine, so that was an interesting comparison. They have the same superstitions regarding what article of clothing to wear to each game, etc, etc, etc. Also, dispel all those rumors about collapsing stadiums, riots, and general football hooliganism. They are pretty strict when it comes to security at games nowadays, with police everywhere. Unless you belong to a "firm" (group of people devoted to fighting other teams firms), it is very unlikely to be in any danger.

Big news after that, we (being a good number of the Luther group, Kevin, Ryan, and myself for sure) are going to the Forest match on Saturday against Bristol. It is a really big game, as Bristol is immediately behind them in the standings, and they have a big rivalry. We're going to go down to the stadium tomorrow, buy tickets, and also outfit ourselves with jerseys and other apparel. The stadium is apparently somewhat comparable to Wrigley Field, in that it is over 100 years old, and has a lot of history contained in it. The Juggins' seemed to indicate it was a pretty popular place to play. It also features 10 pound student tickets. So yeah, that's what's going on.

Other than that, it was a good weekend. Orchestra was definitely a challenge on Saturday, as I struggled with the burdens of playing an alto trombone part on my tenor, which basically means I have to play ungodly high. It calls for a high D, which in all practicality, I cannot play. So, don't know how I'm going to do that quite yet. A lot of people, myself included, went shopping yesterday. I got a sweater thing that's very popular over here, a t-shirt, and an England soccer jersey. They're actually quite cheap. They had a US home jersey at this sports store too on a big sale, and I was so tempted to get it, as it's a lot cheaper than you'd ever get in the States, but I didn't. This morning, we had to sing for the church that the flat is connected to, so I missed baseball practice, which was unfortunate. I'm going to miss the Sunday Astroturf practices pretty much for a month, which sucks. The pastor at the chuch (which had 4 members in the congregation), was, interesting. He compared the Bible to a machine gun, blatantly said how he was in favor of violence to solve problems, explained how the British SAS could beat a Navy SEAL, and also talked about how church members put Bibles on their coffee tables to impress him. Right. Tonight, I'm just going to get a jump-start on reading for the week I think. Anyways, this is getting long. Later.