Matzah Ballers triumph in latest victory for Jewish life at Warwick
Slam dunk as JSoc team win big in 24-team Sunday League tournament
Warwick Matzah Ballers – the official football team of Warwick JSoc, last week won the Sunday League 5-a-side tournament in our first term as a regularly playing football team, a real testament to the current success of the JSoc as a whole.
At Warwick JSoc we pride ourselves on giving our members the opportunity to express their Jewish identity in whatever way they find most meaningful. If that’s by socialising with other Jewish students, we run weekly home-cooked Friday Night Dinners as well as weekly bagel lunches with our brilliant chaplain Rabbi Fishel. If that’s by attending prayer services, we host a Kabbalat Shabbat service every week. And if that’s by playing for a Jewish football team every week – something many Jews may have done throughout their secondary school life – we now have that too!
Not expecting anything when we signed up for the Sunday 5-a-side league, us giving away a three-goal lead in our first match may have felt like a sign of things to come.
However, three convincing victories that followed in the subsequent three weeks made us reconsider our chances in the competition, as we qualified for the quarter finals. 7-3 and 7-5 wins followed, and suddenly we found ourselves in a final last Sunday.
The final was against the same team we played in the first week. Once again, we went 3-0 up, so when our opponents got 2 quick goals to make it 3-2, we were convinced history was about to repeat itself. However, in a second half display that truly showed how far we have come as a team, we managed to seal the victory and the title with a 5-3 win.
My reaction immediately after the match perfectly summed up how I felt about this achievement: “At the start of this year, I wanted to give JSoc members the opportunity to play weekly football, for a bit of fun and also to help grow JSoc. I could never have imagined we would have won a league of 24 teams, and that’s thanks to all of you, so congratulations to you all for being a part of something special.”
In the post-match pub visit, many other team members, some of whom had only become involved in the society through football, were also singing JSoc’s praises.
Many expressed their love for the welcoming, homely community that our events and members have created over the past few years. We’re looking forward to keeping up our good form next term to continue the success of both the football team and the JSoc as a whole.
- Charlie Cohen, Mathematics student, Warwick University JSoc
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