The Flecking Records Soccer Six Awards 2009

You know you’re on to a good thing when you can make the sun and the stars shine on a May Bank Holiday weekend. That’s exactly what happened when Flecking Records attended the 25th Soccer Six (in association with The Samaritans) event recently.

In honour of this fantastic annual event we decided to stage the first Flecking Records Soccer Six Awards – celebrating the best and the worst of the bunch.

The award for ‘Worst Hair’ goes to…

This was a tough call for us to make with Waterloo Road’s Dean Smith (Philip) fighting it out for the hair products with Lee Ryan from Blue. Much to our disappointment, we have to admit that Ralf Little was also sporting a rather unattractive ‘do this year. However there can only be one winner and the winner is… Lee Ryan, for his Elvis-got-dragged-through-a-candy-floss-machine-and-went-all-fluffy look.

The ‘One We’d Most Like to Groom’ Award…

You would think that Dean Smith would have this one in the bag but that is not the case for our next award. After careful inspection – and an almighty urge to remove his Alice band – we have made the difficult decision to award the honour of a potential grooming from The Fleckers to… Justin Hawkins.

The ‘Outstanding Contribution to Hair’ Award…

And the award goes to… Zac Efron! Well, ok, Zac wasn’t actually in the UK, nor was he in attendance at Soccer Six – what a shame. One individual was repeatedly being mistaken for Mr Efron was there though. Hmm, who would have that much style, that much presence AND be at Soccer Six on a sunny May afternoon? Surprisingly, Dirty Pretty things lead guitarist Carl Barât!

‘Most Generous Player’ Award…

Well, of course there really can only be one winner of this prestigious award. After the split of boy band a1 AND a stint in the Celebrity Big Brother house, you’d think every little would help but that is not the case for Ben Adams who graciously gave us the two quid he found on the floor. Thanks, Ben.

The ‘Coolest Player’ Award…

It is without a doubt that this award goes to Libertines front man, and previously awarded for Outstanding Contribution to Hair, Mr Carlos Ashley Raphael Barât (let’s face it, a name like that wins you awards alone!) also known as Carl Barât. The man literally oozed coolness from the moment he appeared on the pitch and we honestly couldn’t think of anyone better to have our view blocked by. Another example of Carl’s coolness – it was only upon arriving home and glancing at our Soccer Six programme that we realised what team he was supposed to be playing for!

The ‘Jeff Award For Utter Jeffness’…

Obviously this award was only ever designed for one individual – you’ve got it, Mr Jeff Brazier! We love Jeff over at Flecking and we were over the moon to see him on the pitch (as a voluntary member of JLS, no less!) We think that he deserves an award for just being Jeff! Congratulations!

‘Most Flecktasticly Exciting’ award…

This is the award for the person/persons whom we were most excited to be in the presence of on the day. Leading up to the event the excitement changed from announcement to announcement with one Flecker constantly holding out for Ralf Little – who never was announced but we were thrilled to see him there for the first game of the tournament. As exciting as Ralf was, he’s not the winner of this award. There was one particular team that, as Team McFly before them did, grabbed the attention of The Fleckers like no other. We were even tweeting a certain Flecking favourite from the press box. Excitement mounted as Team Inbetweeners featuring Bradley James played all their matches excellently. With Simon Bird doing an exceptional job in his role as goalkeeper, in his words, “demolishing” their opponents was easy – Will would be so proud of him. It was the curse of penalties that saw our boys lose out in the semi finals to Soccer AM. Well done boys!
We were so Fleckingly excited by all The Inbetweeners (and Bradley) we thought at times we were going to wet ourselves! It is with great pleasure and excitement that we declare Team Inbeteewners (feat. Bradley James) the winners of this award.

‘Nicest Fitting Shorts’ (AKA Flecking’s Rear of the Year award) and ‘Best Fumble’…

We’ve never done a very good job and hiding our love for this man, and perving over pictures of just feels natural! You only have to look at the photos to see why this award goes to Danny Dyer. There are no words or reasons for the perfection that is his… ‘shorts’.
We also take great pleasure in awarding Danny with the Flecking Records ‘Best Fumble’ award.

‘Worst Fitting Shorts’ including the award for ‘Worst Fumble’…

Originally this award was intended for Anthony Costa from newly reformed boyband, Blue. We hadn’t been in the press box ten minutes and we’d seen him pick his shorts out of his bottom no less than three times. However, as the day progressed a new contender emerged in the form of Costa’s team mate and fellow band member Simon Webb. A brief glance at the pictures from the day and it is obvious that Webb was victorious. It is with many residual memories that we thrust the award for worst fitting shorts upon Simon Webb.
Luckily for Simon we didn’t catch him having a fumble so he doesn’t get the double whammy like Danny Dyer. We have renamed the photo that caught a moment we have dubbed ‘Phillip’s Phumble’ which goes to Waterloo Road’s Dean Smith.

‘Most Feared Player’ Award…

Here at Flecking we don’t really fear anyone, and on the whole we’re fairly brave girlies! The Soccer Six boys however… When asked of their most feared opponent the stars didn’t hold back!
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall over,” exclaimed Danny Dyer. Our favourite Inbetweener James Buckley is said to have mentioned (in passing of course!), “I reckon out of the all the people inside the stadium today, Calzaghe is the one man I could have!” Yes, undefeated champion Joe Calzaghe caused quite a stir among his fellow celebrities. Not used to losing, Joe, the winner of this award, was showing off his nifty footwork in honour of defending champions The Sun.
“I’m a bit gutted we lost, we were a good team and we deserved to win it, I’m not used to losing and The Sun won it last year, the last time I played in Soccer Six two years ago we won then as well, so we’re used to winning these things now.” Never mind Joe, you won our award!

‘Best Comedy Moment’…

With that many stars from TV, film and radio there was bound to be one or two classic comedy moments and this year’s Soccer Six definitely did not disappoint. Although there was many a moment throughout the day, there are two main contenders for this prestigious award but before we get to them we would like to assure Omid Djalili that putting Big Brother’s Ziggy in goal was a noticeable comedy moment within itself (although he did actually do a very god job!).
Back to the nominations, the first of which goes to N-Dubz member Dappy (amazing name!) for his rather childish (yet highly amusing) raspberry! Oh yes, as Mr N-Dubz was swooning (swaggering, a bit like Jack Sparrow to be honest) towards us he passed Waterloo Road’s Lucy Dixon (Danielle) bending over to lovingly give some of her younger fans her autograph. Not one to miss a moment (and still swaggering) Dappy did a quick sharp *Pffffffffffft* – there is nothing like a little childish behaviour from a chart topper to please and amuse us Fleckers!
The second nomination for best comedy moment goes to the legend that is Tamer Hassan. Unfortunately we only witnessed this event from a far due to the confines of the press box, but even from a distance we giggled. The story appears to be that when ‘The View’ featuring Tamer and best bud Danny Dyer played Team Inbetweeners (tut, we knew they’d be involved somewhere!) Rick Parfitt Jnr (playing for Team Inbetweeners) got a little too confident with himself and gained possession of the ball (how dare he!). Tamer, who is an outstanding player, went in for what has later been described as a ‘dirty tackle’. With the ref blowing his whistle (yes, it got that serious) Tamer didn’t agree with his decision and proceeded to get himself sent off! When asked what had happened to Tamer, Inbetweener James Buckley replied “Did you see me basically run away when Hassan came over to confront him on the touch line?” to a follower on twitter! This gets a nomination mealy for the reaction of the other celebrities – they crapped themselves!
It has been so hard to chose between these two nominations we have decided to ‘split’ the award and honour both situation with the respect they deserve.

‘Best Team’…

Some would argue that the winner’s of this year’s Best Team award is clearly The Inbetweeners. Although we do agree that in our eyes they were the best all round team, we must not let our love of all things Inbetween cloud our judgement  – plus, we’ve mentioned them enough already! This award has to go to this year’s winning team. We feel we’ve not made enough fuss of them. Not only did they see off all the other teams but they kept us entertained all day. They blocked our view, made us laugh out loud, stood with Carl, had Pete Doherty as a cheerleader (well ok not quite a cheerleader as such but we’re sure he ‘woo’ed’ from wherever he was!) Yes ladies and gentlemen, we are talking about the now two times winners of Soccer Six, The Babyshambles!

Congratulations to all our winners and to CUP Promotions for staging another hugely successful event, here’s to the 26th annual Soccer Six!