If there’s one thing that I’ve grown into it’s my love of football. This may have been a fascination with the game itself, or its close link to drinking in the day with your mates and not being frowned at; but I can genuinely say that it’s one of my passions. Oddly enough even though I have been a Birmingham City fan since I was young and had a kickabout with my mates on occasion, I’ve never really played football that is until the Creative Cup came along.

When I started at PushON about 3 months ago, I was asked almost immediately whether or not I played football. Having a relatively good level of fitness and a large appreciation for the game I instantaneously said yes, thinking that team sports may be a nice change to the lonely gym visits and it would also allow me to bond with my new work mates; both of which it did. There’s nothing quite like a kickabout with the lads and PushON have now been playing more or less every week. Then came the announcement (and challenge) of the Manchester Creative Cup on Sunday the 10th of October, this gave us something to train for and to get serious about… *cue Rocky music*…

Pre-Cup Training:

We have, up until now had several games in preparation for the cup, all with varying …err… success. Teams that we’ve played include: The guys over at Return On Digital, the Melbourne lot and the CTI Digital rabble. While we won’t be publishing the scores of our previous matches because we’ve ‘forgotten’ them (unlike Return on Digital who’ve documented their Quest for Creative Cup Glory over on their blog) we are always keen on any challengers looking for friendlies.

If you are looking for an opponent between now and the cup then get in touch with our player/manager jordan@pushon.co.uk or @Jordan_Wilson on Twitter.

As there are now 32 teams entered into the Creative Cup, there’s also opportunities with other teams, so far the best points of contact we’ve found are:

• @dave_ashworth and @jbutcherseo over at Return On Digital
• @cybermag from CTI Digital
• @MelbourneHost for the guys at Melbourne Hosting
• Also the guys at Tecmark are keen for a game too

Also make sure you follow the #creativecup hashtag on Twitter.

Team Profile:

Just to strike fear in the hearts of our opponents, we thought we’d give you a short introduction to our team…

Position/Role:

Webmaster – Manager (apparently…)

Kieron Hughes (@kieronhughes)

Team – Liverpool Football Club

Nickname – Physios Favourite (Jordan’s recommendation)

Favourite player – Dietmar Hamann

About – Went to my first game in 94 (Brazil vs Japan at Goodison Park) with my Dad, and was nearly run over by Kenny Dalglish while on the way out.

Domain Registration – Goalkeepers

Roy Wilding (@RoyWilding)

Position - Keeper

Team – Cue shite “I support me legs cos they support me ” gag, none really, Everton when I was at school but only because you had to at least pretend to support one…

Nickname – The little short fat one

Favourite Player – Neville Southall, might of looked like a sunday league reject but was awesome in nets…

About – Not really that keen on Football, would rather watch Rugby but desperately trying to get the cool kids to like me in the office, sad really.

James Sims (@Jamesims)

Position – Keeper

Team – Burnley

Nickname – Simsy

Favourite Player – David Seaman

About – Not being fit enough for a more active position (story of my life) makes me a natural goalie, and also the rock solid cornerstone of the defensive line. Best footballing moment: watching Burnley win at Wembley! Not something you see every day!

Keyword [Opponent] Researchers – Defenders

Sam Rutley (@samru)

Position – Defender

Team – Manchester City

Nickname – The Bear

Daniel O’Malley (@danlukas)

Position – Right Back. In spite of being left-handed. And having a weak tendon in my right ankle. Seems to be some merit in this SEO-type as personality-type thing.

Team – Watching soccer (he’s Australian…) turns you into a girl. Fact.

Nickname – O’Malware

Favourite Player – Hidetoshi Nakata

About – Real men play Speedball.

Mark Mayne (@djmayne2001)

Position – Defender

Team – Manchester United

Nickname – Mayney

Favourite Player – Eric Cantona

About – Emile Heskey is a beast and my new FIFA hero. I am a big Man United fan and consider myself the Eric Cantona of five-a-side.

Linkbuilders – Midfielders

Tom Procter (@tomprocter)

Position – Defensive Midfielder

Team – Manchester United

Nickname – “Tisch”, “Tommy P”, “Timp”, “The Cat”, “Tuffers”

Favourite Player/Player that you’re similar to – Puyol… Horrible.

About – In your face. OOO-RAH!

Ned Poulter (@NedPoulter)

Position – Midfielder

Team – Birmingham City Football Club

Nickname – Nedders, Nedley, Nedlington, Ginger, The Ned, Nedular, Nedwar… (there’s lots)

Favourite Player – Sebastian Larsson

About – “The greatest and most popular sport in history with more than 5 times the TV audience of the next most popular (cricket – every radio and TV in the sub-continent is permanently tuned to Pakistan/India cricket matches – that’s a big audience). Only Americans call it ‘soccer’ owing to their vast ignorance of what goes on outside their national boundaries and the misnomer which has them thinking than a corruption of rugby, with all the danger and most of the skill removed can also be called ‘football’. ‘The Beautiful Game’ can be played anywhere, on almost any surface, by any number of players, for almost any length of time. And is. There is no country on earth that doesn’t play. It has inspired more passion, more courage and more excitement than any other sport in history and dwarfs everything else.

Position – Midfielder

Team – Nottingham Forest

Nickname – TheFuckwitt

Favourite Player – Stuart Pearce

About – Brian Clough made me laugh and Forest played football in a way that seemed to make sense and look beautiful at the same time

Authority Link Winners – Forwards

Jordan (@Jordan_Wilson)

Position – Forward

Team – Blackburn Rovers

Nickname – …

Favourite Player/Player that you’re similar to – David Dunn… weighty, from Blackburn and occasionally plays football.

About – This team is the only power I have within the PushON office, which I intend to abuse at all opportunities. My goal is to make sure we aren’t the worst team at the Creative Cup… as unachievable as that may be…