So i35 is done and dusted, some fun times were had and it was an all round good weekend :)

Unfortunately I'd not had much played much FIFA in the week leading up to i35 due to a pile of uni work that had been dropped on me, so Thursday and Friday were going to be my best chance to get a world of practice in!  Arrived at around 8pm on Thursday with Adz and played FIFA until midnight or so, after this we drove off to the hotel and spent what felt like an hour looking for a place to park the car, all the multi stories were closed :(  Friday saw me playing lots of FIFA during the day with Adz, zai0s and some random matches online. Later on we had a Management (inc Parts and Myself) v CoD4 CSS match, Tw!st carrying them to some lucky wins :P  The FIFA tourney was going to be played on the Saturday, so we headed off at a reasonable time to get some sleep ready for the long day ahead!

Woke up on Saturday feeling awful, probably something to do with the Pizza from the night before, I couldn't eat anything and felt sick all day, not good timing at all :(  The FIFA seeds were sorted and I was happy with my third seed, I was just hoping not to draw Adz in the group stages as we know eachothers game inside out, resulting in quite a few boring matches!  Of course the inevitable happened and we were drawn in the same group, due to the tourney only being 28/32 we were lucky to be in a group of 3, with the top 2 to progress to the knockout stage.  My opening game was to be against ReDD, a regular in the FIFA tournies and seeded 14th.  I proceeded to beat him 6-0, with the funniest moment of the weekend happening in the 80th~ minute of our game... ReDD turned to me and asked "Which button is shoot?".   I looked at him in disbelief and though he was joking, but he was actually being serious so being the nice (lol) guy I am I told him.

This win basically meant that all I needed was a draw against Adz and I was through.  We played our game next and had an awful boring 0-0 game that to be fair he should have won.  This now left one game to played in the group, Adz v ReDD, with Adz needing to beat ReDD by 7 goals to go through as the group winner.  With the score at 5-1 at 80minutes or so I was feeling fairly safe, but obviously ReDD gave a ridiculous penalty away and Adz got another goal in the 90th minute to win the group on goals scored. (We had the same goal difference.....) This meant I'd be playing a group winner in the first round of the knockouts, something I had wanted to avoid...but if I was to get far in the tournament I had to beat the top guys anyway :) 

I was drawn against Barrett1995, Salvo Bazza's younger brother, who had beaten his older sibling 7-1 in a match on the big screen earlier, other people I had spoken to had said they hoped not to meet him in the first round so I was cursing my luck when I saw who I had got :(  Our matched started badly for me, I conceded an early goal and had a man sent off in the first fifteen minutes.  Thankfully I managed to get my game together and pick up some momentum, scoring four goals to take the win, and a huge confidence boost :)

I played Oly in the next round, who played a tactic which involved seven (?) men in defence, I was preparing myself for a boring game... Thankfully I managed to get a lucky goal and hold on for the win, in the 70th minute he ended up selecting my custom formation from the list in an attempt to get back at me!

This win now meant I was in the Semi finals, to play against Bazza from Salvo for a place in the upper final against ChrisyB, who had picked up the game incredibly quick and was demolishing his opponents with relative ease!  Bazza insisted that we played on the console he had been using previously for some reason, I found out during the game that the console was set to a lower resolution, and it really felt different for some reason but I couldn't put my finger on what it was :(  Bazza proceeded to dominate and beat me 7-1, I'd lost the momentum I'd gained in previous games due to the break we'd had waiting for the lower bracket games to finish and the long day and illness was taking it's toll.  If I was to get anything out of this tournament I'd have to pick myself up and grind out a few wins in the lower bracket...it was going to be tough.

My first lower bracket match was against Reidy, who had beaten top seed hughjarse99 on penalties in the previous game and won his other knockout games also via penalties.  Predictably our match finished 0-0 and went to penalties too, and although I missed an early penalty, I came back to beat him 7-6, guaranteeing at least a 4th place finish.

The next match was up against benzi69, the fourth seed who had beaten Adz in a close game earlier in the knockout stages. He also played a very defensive formation, but I managed to bag a lucky goal and spent the rest of the game winding him up via long balls / fouls as it seemed to affect him pretty badly!  This guaranteed a 3rd place finish and a match against Bazza (who had lost against ChrisyB in the upper final) for a place in the grand final.

Bazza took an early lead after I made a silly defensive mistake, and I thought I was back in the game when I had a shot from the edge of the box which was curling into the goal...unfortunately for me it hit the inside of the post and bounced back out to one of Bazza's defenders, and he ran up the field and scored to make it 2-0.  I couldn't believe it (and by the sounds of it the crowd behind me couldnt either) and lost focus and confidence from then on.  I ended up losing 4-0, but as people told me afterwards, there is no shame in that as he's a top player and cgs world champion.

So that was it, I was seeded 3rd and I finished 3rd taking £400, but I was so dissapointed with myself because I really believed I could have made the final at least, and couldn't bear to watch it so I went for a walk to cool down.  The infused management rallied round me and said they were really impressed by how well I'd done, but in all honesty I felt I'd let them down, as a win against either Bazza or ChrisyB would have been huge for the team as they're both CGS players.  Congrats to ChrisyB who went on to win the tournament, he'd hardly played FIFA09 before the LAN weekend so its further evidence that he's a sick gamer and one of the best (if not the best!) in the world, hopefully he'll bring back the gold at WCG this week :D

So that was the FIFA tourney done, I spent the rest of the weekend watching the CSS and CoD4 matches (Well done to both our teams!) and playing Stepmania after Adz had got me hooked again :p  It was great to meet up with the whole team and sit together on one row, they were all top guys, it was fantastic to have their support and encouragement and I look forward to seeing them at LANs in the future! :)

I'm going to be taking a little break from playing FIFA so I can concentrate on uni until christmas (I'm in my final year! :E), then I'll probably be attending a number of events, including the EA Offline FIFA events, FIWC Qualifiers and of course i36 ;)

Thanks to everyone who's supported and wished me well over the weekend, it's a huge lift and a nice confidence booster :)