Sports fans around the world have been reel­ing af­ter ma­jor events and tour­na­ments have been post­poned in a bid to stop the spread of the coro­n­avirus.

But some lo­cal fans were giv­en a bit of re­lief as Net­six and Chill host­ed the first-ever So­cial Dis­tanc­ing Cup. The fete match team, which com­pris­es sev­er­al for­mer na­tion­al team and in­ter­col stars put to­geth­er the event to fill the void caused by the COVID-19 out­break.

“The in­spi­ra­tion be­hind he so­cial dis­tanc­ing cup was ba­si­cal­ly the fact that many fans, many sports fan are suf­fer­ing from not be­ing able to get out in­to the open, in­to the field and en­joy a foot­ball sweat. So what we de­cid­ed to do is cre­ate a vir­tu­al sweat,” said NSAC board mem­ber Kern Gar­diner.

The on­line foot­ball tour­na­ment which saw 16 com­peti­tors at­tempt­ing to best each oth­er in FI­FA 20 on PlaySta­tion.

But the group found a way to get all the in­gre­di­ents for par­tic­i­pants and fans alike, while ad­her­ing to so­cial dis­tanc­ing.

“Stay­ing true to the con­cept of so­cial dis­tanc­ing, all reg­is­tra­tion fees were paid via wire trans­fer or Pay Pal,” Gar­diner said, “and what would a foot­ball tour­na­ment be with­out an au­di­ence, all games were streamed live and thus all our so­cial me­dia on Twit­ter, Face­book and In­sta­gram were able to view the games live, add com­ments and of course be a part of the ban­ter.”

The 16 slots were open, first come, first serve al­though reg­is­tra­tion re­quired a $200 buy-in for com­peti­tors. The $2,000 prize, how­ev­er, at­tract­ed a few of the coun­try’s top pro­fes­sion­al FI­FA play­ers to the par­ty.

Javon “Citys­lick­er” Charles and Bevon “Lao” Julien, both of whom had rep­re­sent­ed this coun­try in in­ter­na­tion­al Es­ports com­pe­ti­tion test­ed the met­tle of the those who dared com­pete, in­clud­ing my­self.

Slick­er and Lao im­posed them­selves with a cou­ple of huge vic­to­ries, in­clud­ing a 7-0 dis­man­tling of my Man­ches­ter City by Slick­er in my sec­ond group game which vir­tu­al­ly end­ed my chances of ad­vanc­ing.

But it was not all smooth sail­ing for the pros.

Af­ter be­ing so dom­i­nant in his two-legged quar­ter­fi­nal tie against Mafioso, that ac­cord­ing to Net­six’s page ex­plained, “Trail­ing 10-0 on ag­gre­gate, The Mafioso_Gods squad re­fused to leave the lock­er room at half­time.”

But Lao’s Barcelona would be out­matched in the semi­fi­nals by Avinash Mo­hammed’s France who stunned him in the first leg of the semi­fi­nal 4-0 be­fore staving off any come­back in the sec­ond with a 2-2 draw.

The fi­nal was tighter, but Charles, switch­ing from France to Liv­er­pool, would win both legs 1-0 and 2-1 re­spec­tive­ly to win the $2000 prize.

“For me the tour­na­ment was a good idea, see­ing as we can’t re­al­ly go out and so­cialise in pub­lic dur­ing this time. The con­cept was bril­liant,” said Charles who al­so ded­i­cat­ed the win to his late moth­er.

The pro play­er al­so praised the lev­el of the com­pe­ti­tion and said he was look­ing for­ward to more com­pe­ti­tions from Net­six.

“In terms of the lev­el of the com­pe­ti­tion it was pret­ty high, I was re­al­ly sur­prised more-so with the ca­su­al guys, they gave me a good run,” said Charles.