doing it for the kids:
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Posted: October 1st 2009
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Saturday morning
As a rule, I hate it when kids’ football is compared in any way to the professional game. However, there are certain principles we youth gaffers should always adhere to, many of which I suspect Sir Fergie and Monsieur Arsene also swear by. Never resting on your laurels is one.
I don’t know the origin of this expression, but presumably it dates back to the laurels that were handed out by way of prizes to sporting champions back in the proverbial day (all-conquering Roman gladiators or ancient Greek olympians spring to mind). Resting on them, metaphorically speaking, meant lazing around in a bath of ass’s milk being fed grapes by nubile young maidens, laurel perched jauntily on head*, when you should have been out training (*somehow I can picture Cristiano Ronaldo doing just this – but presumably only after tea, as he is reputed to be a very good trainer).
After the success of week three of our Saturday morning club, the first time we’d had every group down (in excess of 150 kids) and everything had gone relatively smoothly, I conveniently found some laurels to rest on this week. Never again.
Arguably, there were mitigating circumstances. I’d had a minor operation during the week. It was what is habitually referred to as a “routine procedure”....though as a cartoon I’d seen shortly before the big day had rightly put it, “if having complete strangers slice you open and fiddle round with your insides is a regular occurrence for you, then yes, it is a routine procedure”.
I digress. I was rendered relatively immobile (admin only this week, no coaching), and lost a day or two when I’d normally be sending session plans and the like pinging round the information superhighway...but that’s no excuse for letting standards slip when it comes to coach:player ratios, and volunteer parents having a clear idea of what’s required of them. With a couple of the groups, standards slipped on these points this week. Laurels duly binned, and back to work for the coming weekend.
Saturday afternoon
So relaxed am I of a Saturday afternoon, with my watching brief as a dad taking over from my coaching persona, that in last week’s blog I forgot to mention that my eldest’s ‘other’ team kept another clean sheet, helping them to a well deserved 0-0 against a team they have historically struggled to get points from. That is followed up this week by a convincing “could’ve been a lot more” 3-0 derby victory, which sees them atop the League...albeit at a time in the season when I’ll tell anyone who cares to listen not to look at any League table, whatever the level being played at...but as they are top, I did sneak a glance.
Sunday morning
Another clash this week. We’ve switched the girls from a pm to am kick off to accommodate the opposition (half of whose players have a party to attend in the afternoon). Not only does this mean I’ll miss the boys’ game...it also means we find ourselves without a ref for the girls.
All the teenage lads we routinely use are playing their own games in the morning, whilst the older hands in our contacts book are either booked or have made plans by the time we belatedly get in touch.
The oppo turn up, the husband & wife who run the team admitting to being badly hungover after a celebratory night out...which makes husband’s offer to ref all the more admirable.
We may have gone down 6-2 last week, but this lot had an even ruder introduction to 11-a-side with an 11-1 defeat. We don’t tell our girls, but secretly, in a division where we know points will be hard to come by for us, this is one team we fancy our chances against.
That hope is dashed within the first 10 minutes as, despite playing uphill, they camp themselves in our half. Very well organised and hard-working, it is only some last ditch defending on our part and the lack of a true stand-out player or 3 on their part that keeps things at 0-0. I try not to worry too much about how good the team that thrashed them last week must be...
Suddenly, we have a quick break, their defence parts like the Red Sea, we’re through for a one on one...and hit the post
Now we’re in the game, which quickly becomes a well-balanced, end to end affair...indeed early in the second half we too defy the slope, and begin to get on top. We score one, should get at least one more....then for no apparent reason (certainly not courtesy of a managerial instruction), we begin to sit deep, inviting the opposition on to us. It’s as if we’re a classic Italian team, holding onto their 1-0, challenging inferior oppo to break them down, then swotting them away like so many flies.
Only we’re not a classic Italian team. We’re a team of mixed ability 11 year old girls playing their first ever season of 11-a-side football. Wave upon wave of attacks leads to a succession of corners...and despite the point blank heroics of our keeper, the oh-so inevitable equaliser.
A draw is about right, our first point on the board...but early results suggest a long, hard season could be ahead for both today’s teams.
Meanwhile...just as last week, I’ve received not one text to let me know how the u16 boys are doing. What are they trying to do to me???
Eventually I get the call. A 1-0 win. As last week I ask for instant verification of the result – much as I was convinced on hearing of last week’s defeat that they were winding me up, this time round I’m equally convinced that, for some bizarre reason, they’re lying to me...that we haven’t broken our duck...that we’ll be bottom all season without a point to our name...
But indeed a hard fought 1-0 win it was. Relief 1 Rampant Paranoia 0. And hard fought quite literally, by all accounts. At u15s last year I began to despair of the antics of many managers, supporting parents and also players. It was all getting uncomfortably close to adult pub team football...and now, at u16...well let’s face it, it virtually is adult football, only with added teenage testosterone. Not a pretty sight.
Oh well, we’re doing marginally better than one of our sister teams, who’ve just lost comprehensively on a neighbouring pitch. I enquire how our friends were after this latest setback, and am told that the mum of one of my lad’s friends had said she was “going home to self harm”...
‘The Week’
...and the work never stops. I’ve been washing a load of the lost property gear before putting it on display for a couple of weeks, after which it’s off to Oxfam.
How can a family not notice a hoody featuring all the colours of the rainbow has gone missing? And if they have clocked...do that many steps need to be re-traced before they realise little Johnny left it at football?
How did George @ Asda become so omnipresent that he / it even dominates a u6 football team’s lost property box?
And have you noticed that for every one really cool thing Nike produces, there must be 20+ truly tasteless ones...
Meanwhile, having struggled with unavailability issues for both u12 girls & u16 boys, me and the trusty sidekicks have concluded that both teams need squad reinforcements. Easier said than done at this time of year. There’s no transfer window as such, only by the season’s start, pretty much everyone is registered somewhere, dreaming of the season to end all seasons. Disillusion and thoughts of switching teams don’t kick in til...ooh, at least October.
We have located the odd prospect here and there, lurking in the unregistered shadows...but we know opponents will be out there looking too, and coming across the same handful of available players.
It then becomes a game of cat & mouse, playing by the rules (no inducements allowed), but always trying to impress so as to get one over your rivals. Not that I wish to compare the kids’ game to professional football in any way...