Day 1 : WIF weekend carnival 2021

We planned for the WIF weekend carnival in October out of ‘kedai kopi’ talks. And today it is a reality! It was crazy, spontaneous and still unbelievable.

Out of random talks with the intention to raise the value of women in football, we decided on something intimate yet inclusive. Sha, Bel, Chris and me did our mid day post-mortem during lunch break, and we were evaluating areas where we could have done better. Kid you not, we were running behind time by 30mins of our estimated time. But credit has to be given to the participating teams Ale Ale, Red Eagles, Sri Kandi and PIFA for showing their sportsmanship throughout the tournament this morning. It was interesting to see teams playing at 12 noon with so much passion and giving out positive vibes because they just wanted to play. We thank them for participating and buying our idea of our little carnival.

Later at noon we had mixed football powered by Boldpod. Many were wondering who our main sponsors are, we have to acknowledge Boldpod for being sporting and supportive. They agreed to our crazy ideas and sponsored us. We certainly don't have the numbers (followers) nor a strong engagement, yet they were very kind to us. Although we knew we would not be able to give the best return of investment, we are thankful for their sponsorship for women. It’s hard for the women's teams and even more difficult for women's tournaments to get good sponsorship but they did sponsor us just to show their support for women empowerment. May this be a stepping stone for others to be convinced that there is a market for women. Our mixed football was short and sweet ended with 5 awards where we have the Boldpod Most Sporting Player, Boldpod Special Award, Boldpod MVP, Boldpod Best Goalkeeper and Boldpod Most Entertaining Player. This mixed football was played with mixed organiser committee, coaches, managers and players without having a referee. They almost didn’t want to stop playing because they were having so much fun and that was just how we imagined it would be. We would never be able to thank Boldpod enough for giving us the opportunity to play at Kopa Arena which brought so much joy to everyone.

We ended our night with dinner at Bumblee Dee cafe. Everyone was tired, but happy. We heard so much laughter and of course tiktok everywhere! It almost felt like there is no finals tomorrow!

Looking forward to tomorrow with Boldpod as our main sponsor, Kopa Arena our venue sponsor, Atld Pass our official statistics and Zush our official team wear.

We apologize for any shortcomings along the way, glitches and any other things that had caused unhappiness to the teams, sponsors or even to you who is reading this. We enjoyed ourselves but as they say: the biggest room is the room for improvement. We couldn’t have done this without critiquing and educating ourselves and hope to do better in organizing the next carnival.

Tomorrow is yet another day, let’s have a good final before the journey home.

Thank you.

Written by Mutiara of Women In Football Malaysia