On Thursday 26th October, one of the final matches of the Leisure Leagues took place at Grimsby Institute. The college is responsible for hosting weekly football matches in the Leisure Leagues, which take place on Thursday evenings. Leisure Leagues is an organisation that allows for five and six – a – side matches to occur all over the United Kingdom. The age of players is a vast range, meaning that players can test their skills against anyone. Each team is assigned a colour to wear for every match, so they are easily identifiable at their games.

The game began at around 7:24pm, six minutes ahead of the planned start time, and was between the blue and pink teams. Each team consists of 6 players, including a goalie, and the games last for around 30 minutes. A small break is allowed after 15 minutes, but the total length of the match (and half time) is much shorter than that of an actual football match which can take up to or over two hours depending on if extra time is added.

Despite there being such limited time for the match to take place in, the blue team put their best performance in all season and scored an amazing total of five goals, while the pink team unfortunately didn’t score any. These five goals make up half of their total goals since their debut in August 2023, and one of their two wins. The pink team however have acquired a total of 125 goals since they first began shooting the ball in October 2022, and are currently sitting at 2nd in the championship, whereas the blue team is 7th.

After the final match of this season on the 2nd November, I was able to speak to Luke Ettridge, one of the players for the blue team and he said: ‘It’s a shame that we’ve not managed to stay up this season, but considering it’s our first season we’ve put in some really good performances against experienced teams.’

Although they may not have topped the league this time around, who is to say that the blue team won’t dominate the table next season?