SpecialEffect Wembley Fives
Nathan Adcock
On Friday OPM competed in SpecialEffect’s five-a-side football tournament at Wembley. The guys had been training hard for five weeks in preparation, (mainly needing to work on fitness). There was a buzz amongst the football fans in the office, however the rest of the team were frankly fed up of hearing the words, ‘I swear I used to be good’ and ‘Is anyone else in pain?’.
The famous walk to Wembley felt amazing and there was an air of confidence and ambition. Five weeks of training had seen a vast improvement in our overall conditioning. The pre-match warm-up went well and everyone felt ready.
Our misplaced dreams came crashing to a halt, losing a competitive first game 3-0 to Sports Interactive – the overall winning team on the day.
We won the next game 2-1 and all confidence was restored! The team had found it’s rhythm, we were looking sharp, greatness was surely on the horizon for OPM FC!
Except that it wasn’t.
We went on to lose the remaining three fixtures and had to leave Wembley with our tails firmly between our legs. Perhaps five weeks training wasn’t enough to make up for the years away from the pitch.
Thinking optimistically, a couple of positives have come as a result of this experience:
- Embarrassed, many of the players are now committing to getting fitter – there is talk of OPM FC joining a local league to help with this.
- Having scored a hat-trick in one of our losses, I get to brag about being OPM’s all-time top scorer in all competitions, (with a total of three goals).
Even though we had a pretty miserable day results wise, it was an incredibly fun day out for the team, and all for a great cause! SpecialEffect put on a brilliant event and we can’t thank them enough for organising it.
About SpecialEffect’s Wembley Fives
24 games industry teams will gather in the shadow of the iconic stadium to compete for the SpecialEffect Trophy. Be part of this awesome charity event and sign up your company team today for just £300! The fantastic Wembley Powerleague venue has been recently refurbished with full bar facilities and the capability to record video highlights during the games!
Full list of participating companies:
Sheridans
Miniclip UK
Dovetail Games
Rebellion Services Ltd
Splash Damage
Waste Creative
Criterion Games & Ghost Games
SEGA
Electronic Arts
505 Games
Red Kite Games
Sports Interactive
Skillsearch Ltd
Stellar Entertainment
First Touch Games Ltd
Attention Seekers
Frontier Developments plc
The Creative Assembly Ltd
Studio Gobo
Brightrock Games
OPM Response
Rocksteady
