Contest Entry: My Favorite Football Memory by @rubilu123.

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Hi everyone,

It’s always nice to share my stories with you people and also have the opportunity to read great stories here too.

As far as football memories go, there is only one memory that I can remember vividly in relation to football.

Sit back and enjoy as I take you on a tour some years back into my collection of sweet stories which have been kept safe for moments like this.

This memory is actually a bitter sweet story. This story happened a few years back when I was still in the senior high school. If I can remember correctly I was in senior high 2.

So I attended a school in Kumasi, and in Kumasi we always hold inter school games. These games are mostly held in the middle of the semester to spice everything up.
This games were held in the Kumasi sports stadium, the only sports stadium in the region. So all games were held in it.

So the middle of the semester arrived and everybody was pumped up for these games. For the form ones it was their first time but for the seniors we had already attended a couple of times.

We had a policy of going to the nearby school to have what we called a ‘’pre-jama rehearsal’’. This jama rehearsal was all about sneaking out from school very early in the morning and then going to visit the other school to have a little sing and dance session before we go to the stadium. This was actually done every time we had a football game at the stadium.

This time the pre- game ritual did not go as planned.
Little did we know that some of the boys had bad intentions,
For immediately we were allowed into the school some of the boys went around and stole a whole lot of things from the students.

We actually didn’t know that some did that, so after our pre game ritual, we all went back to our school peacefully so we could prepare and go to the stadium for our football match.

So we prepared and went for our football games.
We arrived at the sports stadium quite early; our school is a few meters away from the sports stadium.
Immediately we all settled down the draw for the matches were revealed.

In the draw, If my school team managed to beat the team we would be facing then we will face our neighbouring school next; the school we observe our pre-game ritual with.
When all the schools settled down the football matches begun.
My school were the ones to play the first match of the day.

In the first half the opposing team were able to put two goals past our keeper.
We were not able to score any goals in the first half, our dreams of playing against our neighbours was about to be dealt a huge blow.

It got worse in the second half when the teams came out from the break; 5 minutes into the game and our star man had to be replaced because of an injury. So he had to be replaced.
Sincerely no one had faith in his replacement, but he proved us wrong.
Imagine the scenes when a second half substitute comes on and goes on to score a hattrick, everybody went crazy.

We went on and won the game, a game we didn’t believe we could win.
So now we were waiting for our neighbours to win their match so that we could smash them in the next round.
They were able to win their match comfortably.

The match between my school and co was set up for 2 hours after their victory.
Right before our game both schools made empty threats at each other, we boasted about who has the better team before kick off.

The ref blew his whistle and our match started.
30 minutes into the game and we had already put 3 past them.
When this happened the whole of our school went crazy, some of us abused them with words and others threw all sort of things at them, from water to fruits and canned drinks.

In our happy moment we did not actually realize that they were still annoyed by the fact that some of our colleagues stole from them and they had planned to pay us back at the sports stadium.
As we were celebrating, a huge rock was thrown at me. I fell flat on my belly and blood started oozing out from my head.
The next thing I woke up on a hospital bed and saw my mother crying.

A huge bandage was wrapped around my head.
My mom told me that I had been gone for a week and they all thought I was dead.
After I woke up from comer, I stayed in the hospital for a week and the whole week my friends kept trooping in with gift cards and all sort of gifts to wish me a speedy recovery.

This is an experience I will never ever forget.
I hope you enjoy reading my story.

Thank you

cc: @njaywan