There was a time three years ago when I thought I would never experience days like yesterday. Yes, we lost the Finnish Regions’ Cup second round fixture against Sisu-Pallo, but regardless yesterday was a classic away day with tremendous feelings of unity and pride. After all that we’ve been through, the days when my team plays are even more special than they used to be, and yesterday I felt it more than on an average match day.

The match started with a disaster: a goal scored on us after less than 40 seconds of play. However, a goal by Petri Vadén rectified that blunder in a matter of just a few minutes, and at that point standing with my friends and singing for my loved one felt better than it ever had. The Finnish winter is a long one, and it always comes as a bit of a surprise how much more competitive matches matter to me inside than any winter scrimmages.

We ended up finishing the first half 3-2 down, and even though we had our chances to equalize during the second half, we frankly did not play very well. It is indeed easy for me to admit that Sisu-Pallo deserved their 4-2 victory. Regardless of the fact that we lost the match and had some obvious problems in the midfield, I left the field with a lot of optimism. The coaches got a lot of good new information yesterday, and some key players like Joonas Kupiainen got some important minutes. This all makes us a bit more ready for our Nelonen opener on Thursday. It certainly would have been fun to make a deep cup run this year too, but there is a lot of matches ahead of us regardless.

For me personally the highlight of the trip happened before the match had even started. I have not played any football for years, but when the team was warming up, a few of us supporters borrowed a ball from them and went to the other end of the field for a few kicks. The home team was nowhere to been seen at the time, so we had one goal all to ourselves. I was surprised at being able to execute certain simple touches and passes with the ball. Given that later this spring I will play for TamU-K’s recreational team (at least once), I was very happy to discover that I had not lost my basic ball-handling skills. I might only be in a three-minute shape, but I think I will enjoy even just warmups immensely.

During our kick-around we were even joined by one of the players, Sergio Moreschini, who was not available for the match as his international transfer has not cleared yet. I really hope that he will be signed. I do not have a 100 per cent certainty that that’ll be the

case, but at least it is a good sign that they are trying to figure out how the transfer would work out. It is not too common to make international transfers on this level, so I bet the folks working in the FA’s district office have some re-learning here too.

It was a beautiful moment when the supporters and the team were on the field together at the same time. We also traveled on the bus together, and on the way back there was some good inter-mingling. I can only imagine how much better it would have been if we had won.

Sisu-Pallo – TamU-K 4-2 (3-2)
1 min 1-0 Petri Huttu
4 min 1-1 Petri Vadén
28 min 2-1 Henri Saranpää
40 min 3-1 Jukka Yli-Renko
45 min 3-2 Jouko Turunen (pk)
81 min 4-2 Henri Saranpää

Discipline:
7 min Henri Saranpää, Sisu-Pallo (caution)
9 min Timo Kauppinen, TamU-K (caution)
22 min Jan Irjala, TamU-K (caution)
27 min Juha Kumara, TamU-K (caution)
90 min Kalle Heltonen, TamU-K (caution)