Dear Travellers through the Football Universe,

Have you heard about the Magnificent Seven yet?  If you haven’t then let me tell you about it.  It happened on February 10th.  A great day that will live in infamy.  Okay, now keep this in mind and I will come back to it later. 

Anyway, I got a few things to share this week but first let me start with my recent observations and travels through the universe of football, as we know it.  Two weeks ago, the Wanderers travelled out to Stadium Sentul to play against Team Japan and bid adieu to one of the finest player's ever to grace the pages of the JIFL Newsletter, Sugimoto.  Alas, even Sugi must go back to the homeland eventually and his transfer slip has been pulled.  He will leave us in early March and we wish him all the best always and may he find a club as good as Team Japan and the JCC have been since his arrival 5 years ago.

During his time here, he won Goal Scorer of the Year, he won MVP of the Season (most Man of the Matches), and he won the coveted Player's Player of the Year award which is like winning the Academy Award for Best Actor.  Voted on by your peers, there is no better honour than the last one.  As well as collecting all of that, Team Sugimoto also accounted for five All-Star first team selections to carve himself into the JIFL Hall of Fame. I think that all will agree that Sugi will go down in history as being one of the top ten of the all-time best players to have ever played in our league.

Which brings me to the Magnificent Seven:  Only seven Wanderers, the core, made it to Sentul on that fateful day.  The Japanese were so kind as to request the match only be a played as a friendly and that we play 7 -vs- 7 just in Sugi's honour but, after lightly talking it over, the Mag 7 proclaimed that that they would prefer an official match and risk the league championship on this single game.  The Japanese boys slightly confused by the guest’s request to make it official had a sheepish grin across their faces and looked around to see how much Manny might have smoked before the match.  Straight faced the Wanderers boys looked around at each other, pulled their socks up and tucked their sheep-shaggers in and said, 'Let's do this....!"  7 versus 11 seems about the right odds.  One way or the other, this could be a day that we will talk about for the rest of our lives!'.  Half time finished 3-1 for the Mag 7 and the game ended 6-3 with Tommy taking two, Todd taking three and Manny taking the first one (he will want you to know) to lead the way.  And, last but not least, Sugi got his mandatory goal that he always gets every time that he has ever played against the Wanderers (and his customary Man of the Match honours as well).

Shock was the end result from both sides and David had slain Goliath.  Anyway, a great story from the annals of JIFL history and a good yarn for Sugimoto to take back to Japan and tell his buddies about someday.

♦