by Spencer FC
Kluivert stepped up to remind Daniel that there’s more than one way to beat the Great Dane when he converted a corner with a backheel that should be listed in the dictionary next to the word ‘insouciant’.
The half-time whistle went and we headed to the dressing room with the scores level, but I was not happy. We weren’t playing anywhere near as well as we could, and, after some wise words from the knowledgeable football manager we had for the day, former Arsenal defender Martin Keown, I gave some positive talk to the lads. But our biggest boost at half-time came from a more surprising source.
One of the producers of the show came into the dressing room and asked the legends, ‘Is anyone OK to play 90 minutes?’ The legends were only obliged to play 45 as part of their contract. Carragher immediately said, ‘I’ll play ninety.’
I just thought, Get in!
Now, there are a few reasons that Carragher might have been up for playing the full game, but I like to think it was at least partly due to the little speech I’d given before kick-off, setting out how important this match was to us. I think he’d got where I was coming from with that.
Another reason, of course, was that Joe Weller was really getting on his nerves. They’d been having a few verbals on the pitch, so Carragher seemed to say, ‘Nah, I’m not having that. I’m going to have him in my pocket for the rest of the match.’
Either way, I was delighted, and most of the legends played more than the 45 minutes they were required to, which I thought was great from them. It showed they weren’t just clocking on and off. But only Carragher played the full 90.
Much has been made of Carragher’s aggression in this game, and while I think there might have been one or two moments where he got a bit carried away, there was a ref for a reason. It’s the official’s job to crack down on that sort of thing and nothing on the day was deemed worthy of a card in their eyes. I also think that when you’re a retired centre-back who isn’t as fast as he used to be, you need to use every trick in the book to stay on top of your opponents. Carragher definitely fell into that role but there’s obviously a line that shouldn’t be crossed. I wouldn’t say Jamie crossed that line – I’d say he came very close to it – but all it showed to me was that he wanted to win the game and, being on his team, I appreciated that.
However, not even Champions League winner Jamie Carragher could stop us going 4–3 down at the start of the second half when Theo Baker got his second goal of the game, a far less spectacular finish than his first. We needed to steady the ship, and quick.
Kluivert, who didn’t stop smiling all day, came close to a joyous hat-trick when he hit the bar with an effortless strike. ChuBoi put a lot more force into his shot that he blazed over soon after, but we finally broke their resistance when ChuBoi found his range and guided an equaliser in.
And then we won a penalty.
While Theo’s goal was likely to be the best moment of the game for the viewers, the best moment for me was undoubtedly metaphorically handing the ball to my brother Seb to take the penalty that could give us the lead in the match. Football had brought us together as brothers and made us the firm friends we are today. Here we were, at Wembley Stadium, playing in a cup final together, with Seb about to put his name on the scoresheet.
He buried it, of course. We’d talked about doing the golf celebration before the match – we hadn’t rehearsed it – because of his love of the sport, and we ran off and did it in the corner, just as we’d done so many other celebrations at home in our back garden as children. Only this time, 20,000 people were going berserk. What a feeling.
Seb would brag after the game about how he had a 100 per cent shot accuracy for the match. He managed one shot on target in the match and scored it. Stats don’t lie!
We never looked back after that, with Manny adding a goal, and I was chuffed for another guy on our team who definitely couldn’t boast of a 100 per cent shot accuracy after the chances he’d had, but who kept plugging away and putting himself in the right positions. Daniel Cutting finally buried a chance in injury time, proof that you can’t keep a good man down.
The feeling of elation during the match, when you’re just waiting for the whistle to go, there’s nothing like it. The anticipation is almost the best bit. When the whistle goes, of course, my head switches out of game mode and into thinking about the video and the production.
But then I stopped, just for a moment, and reminded myself of that promise I’d made at the first Wembley Cup, that I would allow myself to drink it all in and enjoy it this time. And I did just that as we collected the trophy and celebrated like mad with the fireworks and glitter cannons going off. We even did a mini lap of honour with the trophy. If the first Wembley Cup had been the thing to put my channel on the map, this one was the cherry on top. It was oh-so sweet.
One responsibility I couldn’t forget about, even for a moment, was the debt we owed the people who had made the day possible. The crowd had been amazing, and the great thing about it was that they weren’t there just to support one team. Sure, some wanted Joe’s team to win, while others wanted Spencer FC to, but they were there mainly to see a good show, which I hoped we’d delivered with 11 goals in total. There was none of the agro, hatred or bitterness you get from some types of football, just a really positive atmosphere with everyone out for a party.
I delivered my final speech of the day then, with a voice certainly more hoarse than before and motives undoubtedly more heartfelt than some of the mind games I’d been up to earlier. I thanked the amazing fans in the stadium and those watching on YouTube, whose support has never been less than incredible, as well as all the people who worked on the show, all the players – everyone involved.
I had to do that because, as with Hashtag, I have responsibilities beyond being just a player on the pitch. But more than that – much, much more than that – I was genuinely grateful.
These people had given me the greatest day of my life.
TOP 10 FOOTBALLERS I’VE PLAYED WITH OR AGAINST
Robert Pirès
He won a World Cup, but he’ll always be remembered for winning the Wembley Cup. This guy bossed the midfield for us and was a class act both on and off the pitch.
Patrick Kluivert
Never seen anyone score goals so effortlessly. His brace was huge for us in the 2016 Wembley Cup.
Jay-Jay Okocha
He retired a decade ago, but he’s still got the skills to pay the bills. He repeatedly mugged me and my teammates off in front of 20,000 people at Wembley. Cheers, Jay-Jay.
Michael Ballack
Had the displeasure of going up against him in the England–Germany charity match. Still an unbelievable athlete and an absolute powerhouse in the centre of midfield.
Rio Ferdinand
One of the best centre-backs in my lifetime. Started at West Ham, and I’ve had the pleasure of both playing with him and getting to know him off the pitch.
Jamie Carragher
Caused some controversy in the 2016 Wembley Cup, but without his never-say-die attitude we might not have won.
Robbie Fowler
Absolute goal-scorer. Played with him twice, at Wembley and Anfield, and he always knew where the back of the net was.
Peter Schmeichel
If I’d played with him in his prime, he’d be higher up this list for sure. One of the best goalkeepers ever.
Paul Dickov
One of the toughest jobs I’ve ever had on a football field was marking this man when Hashtag played the Man City staff team. He also scored a worldie.
Jimmy Conrad
Captain America, he’s played a couple of times for Hashtag and I’ve also played against him. Class act and a top defender.
Special mentions: Cherno Samba, Graeme Le Saux, Ray Parlour, Lee Hendrie, David James
We had challenged the cream of Sunday league sides around the country to send in a video explaining why we should play them, and the virtual mail bags at Hashtag United HQ were soon filled to burstin
g. We received videos saying everything from ‘We’ll smash you easily’ to ‘Our striker’s better than your striker, so nah, nah, nah, nah, nah’, and others unprintable in a book like this.
We would pick the best of them. We’d pay for their travel, put coaches or whatever they needed on to get down to the Hashtag Arena in north London, and we’d give them a game.
Division 3, in which we had a target of 18 points from 10 matches to get promoted, was going to be tougher than anything we’d experienced together as a team before. There was no danger of the teams we were about to play underestimating us or not taking it seriously, because they were challenging us and they knew full well what was on the line. They’d seen us play and they’d know what to expect.
Added to that, these teams had been playing together for years, whereas we had only been together for a few months. Sure, some of us went way back, but this squad, as a collective, with the new boys Seb had brought into the fold that we were only just getting to know, hadn’t been together long. It takes time to forge proper understandings, and experience to fully meld a group together. I knew we had some good players, but I wasn’t sure that would be enough.
To be brutally honest, I thought we were going to get stuffed.
Our first match was against the Fox and Hounds FC, a team that had won the double in the Watford Sunday league the previous season, scoring 175 goals in the process and barely conceding. The thing about Sunday league is that you can’t always gauge the level teams are playing at, but on paper they’d smashed it – and now they wanted to take a pop at us.
The Sunday league theme wasn’t the only thing we changed to kick off Division 3. We had a deal with a new shirt sponsor, too, Top Eleven, a very popular mobile management game, and we were delighted. EE had been great to us, but it was only ever a short-term deal, and they’d had some exposure from it and we’d had a sponsor on our shirts. It was an amicable split.
The Top Eleven deal was a gamechanger for us. Up until this point, I had been paying for everything out of my own money. The costs were fairly substantial. I’d have four cameramen on each shoot, the pitch-hire fee, equipment costs, paying the refs (yes, we do pay them!) and linesmen – it all adds up – which for amateur football is pretty crazy. I definitely wasn’t making that back in advertising revenue on YouTube.
I think some people had the wrong idea about Hashtag and thought we were this YouTube team set up to make money, but in actual fact I was losing money every game. I definitely wasn’t complaining, though. Hashtag was an investment, and any money we had coming in went straight back into making more content and paying for things like travel when we hit the road.
It was never guaranteed to be a success. The whole project was a gamble for me, but it was a risk worth taking because I got to do some cool things with my mates, and I was hopeful that, if it worked, a sponsorship deal would follow. Top Eleven gave us that deal and they have been brilliant. The cherry on the cake was that our badge and kits would be integrated into the Top Eleven game itself, as well as some of our videos. Slowly but surely, Hashtag United were taking over the virtual football-management world!
We made some tweaks to the format of the videos, to keep things fresh for the viewers. We added in the ‘Previously on Hashtag United …’ recap section at the start, just like the ‘here’s what happened last time’ bits on a quality drama series. We also added pre- and post-match interviews against an advertising-board background – just like you’d see in broadcast-TV football coverage – to make things look that little bit more slick, and hopefully get some decent words from those involved in the games. This was an effort to bring the personalities of some of our players into the content more and make it less about Spencer and more about Hashtag.
The Chairman was upping the ante too. He promised us a new signing if we got promoted, which set YouTuber tongues wagging as to who that might be, and on a more worrying note he promised that, if we were relegated from the division, we would lose a player, chosen by a public vote. Uh-oh …
Sam Leete, the Fox and Hounds manager, certainly had some confident words in his pre-match interview, predicting a 3–0 scoreline, but words can only take you so far in this game, and it was the talking we would do on the pitch that mattered.
The match against the Fox and Hounds was tough. They were a good side, really well organised, but we were up to the task. Ryan Adams scored with a very neat finish to give us the lead and, for the first time in a Hashtag shirt, we kept a clean sheet to give us a 1–0 win. The Chairman was delighted with the clean sheet in particular.
We were good value for the win too. Sam ‘brother of Ryan’ Adams was superb at the back for us, with Dan Brown and Ryan, our dream-team strikers, buzzing around and causing them problems all match, and John Dawson, playing in central midfield next to me, absolutely clobbering the bar with a shot. The Fox and Hounds had arrived bigging up their goal-scoring exploits, but their goalkeeper was probably their most impressive performer.
With the first three points in Division 3 now secure, we received an update direct from the Sky Sports News office. The breaking news was in, and the headline read: SKY SPORTS NEWS HQ CHALLENGE YOU TO A MATCH. SEE YOU ON THE FOOTBALL PITCH.
The Sky Sports News team had followed a pretty similar trajectory to Hashtag in many ways, playing games against Premier League clubs’ staff teams and those of other media outlets. They were a proper team in their own right and they’d done their homework on Hashtag, watching every game we’d played, and they certainly weren’t going to be treating it like an exhibition match.
Despite this being Sky Sports, they were a Sunday league side consisting of people who worked there. There were no famous faces in their ranks – just a team of good footballers – and that’s much scarier to me than a team with some ex-pros in them. With all due respect to the Graeme Le Sauxs of this world, they might still have incredible technique, but we could just run round them. They’re not in their physical prime any more, and they just don’t care as much.
I was definitely proven right on that. The Sky Sports News team were very good indeed, and from the start we found ourselves under the cosh. They were absolutely all over us, and I don’t think we’d been dominated to such an extent before.
It was an evening kick-off, and as the day slowly faded and the floodlights snapped into action, we knew we were in for a real game here. We had to keep things tight at the back. I found myself resorting to hoofing it long just to relieve a bit of the pressure, and with Dan and Ryan up front, chasing everything down, it wasn’t the worst tactic in the world.
With some of the players we have in our team, you can never write us off. After some magic from John Dawson on the left, Dan Brown managed to gobble up a rebound and put us 1–0 up. The goal was completely against the run of play, and the pressure wasn’t about to let up any time soon.
The rest of the match followed a similar pattern, with Sky Sports dominating possession and Hashtag looking to hit them on the break. Our goalkeeper, Andy Jeffs-Watts, played a blinder, and Sky Sports could rightly feel frustrated as we kept them at bay. However, we had our chances too, and we came desperately close to putting the game out of sight with a couple of slick counter-attacks.
It was dark by the time the whistle went and we’d secured our second 1–0 win in the division, with only our second-ever clean sheet. We could not believe we’d won, and as we trudged off the pitch tired but over the moon in a way only a hard-earned win can make you feel, there was a sense that things were beginning to click with this team.
We’d been together as a group for a little while now. There were a load of boys in the group who knew each other from school and our CBA days, of course, but we were really getting to know Seb’s mates too, and we were getting on better than I’d ever dreamed we would. Nothing brings a team together more than winning, of course, but it wasn’t just that.
We had a WhatsApp group going with loads of banter flying around every day, and looking forward to the next game was
becoming a huge part of our lives, not just mine. The guys couldn’t wait for the end of their working week when they could pull on the Hashtag shirt once again. We were in this together.
There was a feeling in the group that we had a bit of a Leicester City 2015–16 thing going on. Leicester, of course, had won the Premier League the previous season against all odds, and we could see some similarities in our squad. We were playing a relatively unfashionable 4–4–2 formation in which our two frontmen were getting all the goals, just like Leicester. We were a counter-attacking side too as well as having this incredible camaraderie going on, just like the Foxes in the Premier League. Most of all, we were beating teams we had no right to beat on an incredible roll that showed no signs of stopping.
So of course we lost our next game, against one of the weaker Sunday league teams we had played. All that Leicester City rubbish we had been talking about the week before went out the window pretty quickly, didn’t it?
Mongolian Horses FC were a Sunday league side captained by Matt Stevens, brother of our midfielder James Stevens. This match was as much about family pride for the Stevens boys as anything else, but there were still three points up for grabs so there were no excuses for taking it lightly. And, with all due respect to Matt and his team, given the teams we’d beat we never should have lost this match.
Having said that, we shouldn’t have gone in front the way we did either. Their goalkeeper made an absolute howler in the ninth minute, coming to collect a regulation ball and somehow letting it through his legs to allow Ryan Adams to nip round and score the easiest goal anyone is likely to score in a Hashtag shirt. Seriously, who would be a keeper?
We came out for the second half and realised just what an opportunity we’d passed up in the first. It was really windy that day, with the sun low in the sky. We’d had the wind and the sun behind us in the first half, but now we were playing into the elements, and it was very hard to see and to get the ball out. I could sympathise with their keeper now, as we were really up against it.