It has been a long winter, but now our home field in Pyynikki is finally free from ice, and the real matches can start. First up we have a Finnish Regions’ Cup fixture against Viialan Peli-Veikot (ViiPV) tomorrow at 5 pm. Excitement in and around the club is definitely rising.

Played for the first time last season, Regions’ Cup is a new thing in Finnish football. It is a national cup competition in which teams in level four and below in the Finnish football pyramid are allowed to participate, so the winner can be considered the best amateur team in the country. As many as 177 teams participate in the competition this year, a very solid number in my opinion. TamU-K was drawn straight into the second round of 128 teams, just like tomorrow’s opponent ViiPV. This year the winner of the cup will earn a berth in UEFA Regions’ Cup in 2014. European glory is within reach again!

Seriously though, this is probably the least important of the four competitions that we participate in this season. We do not have a very realistic chance of winning this competition, and we obviously cannot face a professional club here, unlike in the Finnish Cup. Still of course it would be nice to win a few matches and maybe get an away trip somewhere where we have never played before. On the other hand, I’m a bit concerned about fixture congestion in the summer.

Tomorrow’s match comes at a great time for us though. Our all important Vitonen campaign starts just a week later on the same pitch at Pyynikki Stadium, and having a chance to play a competitive match in preparation is definitely quite helpful, especially as ViiPV happens to be one of the teams that plays in the same subdivision with us in Vitonen. They had a very solid season last year, finishing fifth in the table, and they should be a great test for us. I’m told they have been training regularly through the winter, and have strengthened their team by a forward that came from TKT, a team that plays two levels higher in Kolmonen.

And talking about Pyynikki, we now know that in addition to tomorrow’s match, our first four league matches in Vitonen are played there too. Two of them are home matches, and two are aways. The rest of our home matches are not set yet, so we are still eagerly waiting for news on that.

But before that there’s a match to play tomorrow. A win would set a nice tone to the start of the season.