Lets go Gauchos! Lets go!

Yesterday night I went to the first "soccer" game of the season, UC Santa Barbara vs UC Irvine. It was a very strange experience - there was real stadium seating with steep wet steps to walk down that had no grip and made everything very dangerous. I was bemused to see the Irvine supporters standing next to the UCSB supporters - a fight could have broken out so easily! But having said that much to my disappointment there was very little hooliganism, I only heard the occasional slur or booing towards Irvine, no derogatory chants! It felt far too sophisticated.

The Americans kept sticking their hands up and wiggling their fingers whenever we had a corner or penalty and it took me quite a while to discover that it meant luck - it felt more like we were waving at a child or trying to do some magic. Very strange. They were also throwing tortillas due to our team (The Gauchos) inventing some move or something or the other, I'm not entirely sure, but tortillas make very good frisbees.

Occasionally a chant would break out such as "Lets go Gauchos, lets go!" or some such, I found it hard to hear exactly what they were saying and just as I worked out what they were saying they finished. The chants ended far too quickly, no chance to really get into it. There were however four girls wearing bikinis with "UCSB" written on their stomachs in big letters and lots of people were wearing our college colours, there was even someone dressed as a native American.

For someone who doesn't actually watch "soccer" I have managed to pick up a lot over the years and was able to keep an eye on the game, I generally knew what was happening and was able to make intelligible comments and sounds ("oohhhhh!"). But I still don't know the offside rule and Oz, who was there as well, wasn't able to help. Little steps.

The game was a little bit onesided as we won the national championship last year and so there was little competion. We had close to 20 shots, they had about 4. We won 4 nil. Three goals were scored in the first half and so the game had basically been won already, the Gaucho's didn't really try in the second half and it got quite boring. I'm not sure if I'll go to another match anytime soon, but I'm glad I went.