There's another team in my soccer league who can best be described as a consummate disgrace. We're their chief rivals for winning the league. Every game against them seems to evolve the same way -- we come out playing hard against them, and they wail every time they're touched. Then one of their guys will fall during a fair challenge, which the ref doesn't call, and so they come to the conclusion (very vocally) that the ref has it in for them. After that, they feel they're entitled to play as dirty as possible, fouling us viciously, taking dives, calling everyone names, gloating at mistakes our players make, and of course, whining whining whining from their bench as well as their field players. One of their guys even spat on me earlier in the year.

Well, we played them for the last time a month or so ago, and it ran true to course. It was made worse by the fact that the referee didn't show up and our coach had to do the reffing. We were winning 1-0 at halftime, which was to them of course the fault of our coach the ref, but we just got sick of it after a point, and let the game slip away from us, and lost 2-1. They were of course in heaven. As I walked by their dressing room, one of their guys yelled, "You all have no integrity!" It may have been the ultimate pot-kettle-black moment ever. (Did I mention that their game the previous week got called because of a fight?)

I came away from the game with a sprained ankle (though I was the victim of a few cheap fouls, this was just the result of twisting it at some point). So I didn't play again until this past Sunday, which was the last game of the season. It was against a completely different team, and we needed to win in order to win the league. The funny thing was that, before the game, their coach talked to ours and expressed his wish that we would win the league because they all hate that other team too, and joked about throwing the game. They didn't, of course, but we beat them anyway, 3-0, and so won the league. Sweet.

One beautiful thing is that the website that shows the results has been incomplete most of the year and has been showing them as winning. Well, it's been fixed now. (See "VETERANS" at the bottom.)

We were talking before the game that if they're still in the league next year, we might just refuse to play them. And if other teams follow suit, all the better. It's just not worth the injury risk for a bunch of old farts like us. Plus the fact that they're intolerable to play against whether you beat them or not.