Revolution Trains – in its football alter-ego Sparta Revolution – took part in a 5-a-side football tournament with rail industry teams from Beacon Rail, GBRf, Freightliner, Avanti, Lumo, Progress Rail, Yellow Rail and Network Rail among others to raise money for charity in East London today, Thursday September 7th.
The annual tournament organised by Beacon Rail sees squads of eight from across the rail industry taking part in a day-long tournament to Power League rules, with all money raised going to The Railway Children charity, the same charity that will benefit from the N gauge Prize Draw Revolution is running now and over the weekend at TINGS.
The rules specify that every team should have at least one member of the opposite sex on the pitch at all times, and to help with the gender mix daughters Jo Ando and Amber Veasey gamely agreed to take part.
And as Revolution only has four employees our friends Ben Jones from Heljan and Alex Perkins from Cavalex also agreed to don the orange and black.
Unfortunately a crushing lack of skill and fitness saw Revolution make a clean sweep of results: Played 4, Won 0, Drawn 0 and Lost 4 with Revolution roundly thrashed by teams from Network Rail (the eventual runners-up), Avanti, GBRf and Freightliner. In the words of a Norwegian commentator in 1981, ‘our boys (and girls) took a hell of a beating…!’
In all the event raised well over £10,000 and, on the hottest day of the year, resulted in remarkably few casualties.
With TINGS approaching this weekend, and set-up day tomorrow, the timing may have been unfortunate as far as potential injuries were concerned but, other than a broken(!) wrist and a strained calf, the team made it through relatively unscathed and we look forward to seeing everyone this weekend at the Warwickshire Exhibition Centre.