In what was surely the most shocking upset in world sport since Leon Bertrand Spinks beat Mohammad Ali in 1978, GroupThinkFC was bundled out of the finals tonight, scoring a meagre two goals against the opposition’s 10.

Still, it wasn’t a total loss. We were beaten by a team named Dirka Dirka, which can only mean they’re Islamist terrorists — which, as we all know, means Teh Left still wins.

Peace be upon them, Mohammed jihad.

Thought I’d better post the result of GroupThinkFC’s epic clash on Friday before we resume our losing ways tonight. We beat what turned out to be the most prophetically named team in history 14-1.

But what should have been a thoroughly enjoyable milestone victory over Target Practice turned out to be a drag for several reasons:

1. They were Emos.
2. They were violent.
3. There was a girl on the team, who got away with being the roughest of all of them because the referee clearly didn’t feel right about penalising a girl — and we didn’t feel right about decking her.
4. They were utterly humourless about their abilities (sic).
5. They pretty much conceded defeat in the first few minutes by deciding to defend for the entire match — an astonishing strategy, given how many goals we’ve had scored against us.
6. During the match, Testiclegate erupted, with one of their players accusing a GroupThinker of “grabbing his nuts”. Bullshit — we only ever do that to people in the bar afterwards, and almost always after buying them a house riesling.

Still, a win’s a win. Huzzah.

Toaf — who, to the eternal shame of every other GrodsCommenter*, was the only person to tip a GroupThinkFC victory — takes out the betting prize: a season pass with front-row tickets to our remaining matches, valued at $0.00.

But since he’s currently living in Nairobi, we’ll be auctioning it on GrodsBay … as soon as The Editor designs and gets it working.

* With the exception of EC, who declined to predict a result but — as always — declared her undying support for TehPeople’sFootballClub.

A battle of epically mediocre proportions is looming at the Action Indoor Sports Stadium, with GroupThinkFC taking on fellow bottom-of-the-table-dweller Target Practice on Friday night in the ultimate quest for glory some semblance of dignity.

Neither of us has won a match this season (Target Practice’s “win” being the result of a now-defunct team’s forfeit).

GroupThinkFC has conceded two more goals than Target Practice but has also scored two more, which puts the aggregate slightly in our favour when the ratio of goals conceded to goals scored is taken into account.

TehPeople’sFootballClub is coming off a gallant 5-9 loss to the top-of-the-table Kectus last week, while Target Practice also found the back of the net five times in a slightly wider losing margin (5-11) to third-place Hennessy FC.

Both sides have clearly been salivating over this match for weeks — perhaps more profusely than all the other teams salivate over the prospect of playing either of us.

Let there be no doubt: if this were a prizefight, Don King himself would pull out all the stops to promote it.*

So I’m taking bets on the result in comments: correct result and closest to the score will win a prize so awesome in its awesomeness that they’ll be shocked into a seemingly underwhelmed stupor.

NB: An injury cloud hangs over The Editor, who dislocated his big toe during last week’s match. His absence on Friday night would be certain to have an impact on the result, but I’ll leave it up to you to decide what that impact might be.**

GroupThinkFC, which An Onymous Lefty has ingeniously dubbed “The People’s Football Club”, played its second match last night and was annihilated by seven goals.

Now, at the risk of sounding like an apologist — but hey, some of my best friends are apologists — I’d just like to point out that we’re being prevented from playing at full strength by one significant factor: we still haven’t worked out how to play soccer.

Rest assured, though — once we’ve stopped picking up the ball and I’ve developed a better goal-defending strategy than this, the championship is more or less in the bag.