Kanga Cup

• William Durrant, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2016

Kanga Cup


It was a cold sunny day in Canberra, I believe it was -3 degrees Celsius. I stepped onto a beautiful flat soccer pitch and listened to the crunch of the grass as nerves rushed through my body at the speed of lightning. I heard all my teammates in the background all getting fired up for the big game against Altona City. We had played Altona in the group stage and they beat us 2-1 and we were determined to pick up the cup today.

The morning of the final arrived and all my soccer mates were in the hotel's lobby. We had our breakfast, and straight after we were dismissed to go to the venue. When we got there we went straight to the dressing rooms to go through the game, and our coach told us what we needed to do. After that we started our warm up that was ridiculously long, and it was more or less a game in itself. But we know that it's really helpful for the actual game and although it's tiring, it's still a good exercise.

So back to the final, the whistle blew to go onto the pitch and we all walked in one straight line that fanned out when you got to the centre. The parents took their photos and the captains did the toss. Altona were due to kick off first, so they set up in the centre, and bang the game was live! It was a tense match, sitting at 0-0 at 30 minutes, until our centre attacking midfielder got the ball, did a bounce pass with our winger, and hit one top right!!! An absolute scorcher, and we were over the mood.

Not so long after, we scored another goal, a bottom left by our striker and at that time, I think we all thought we could maintain the lead. It came half time and of course a coach gave us our talk. He said, although we were 2-0 up we were still to play it like no one had scored. 'Brrrr' the whistle blew and we were back on the pitch, but this time we kicked off. At about 55 minutes one of the Altona players got the ball and smashed the ball into the back of the net from way outside the box, and it went downhill from there... They scored one and then another, leaving the score as 3-2 there way and we lost the final.

After the match, although Altona City were extremely happy that they won the title, they were most definitely not gloating, or anything to that manner and I thought they were very good in the way that they didn't rub it in. We received our medals and we packed up to go home to our families and friends. We told them all about our experience at Kanga and they were so disappointed that we lost but still so proud.

Kanga cup was so much fun