Tuesday, 5 August – training

Fantastic weather for training, dry, sunny and warm – I was even contemplating wearing shorts to training.

Good numbers at training with 16 players.  The more players we get to training usually means more parents which means more assistance for Steve and I (that’s a good thing).

Something I’ve noticed is that the kids seem to be enjoying training which motivates me to lift my game and want to deliver a good training session.

I was a bit sad to hear from Amelie’s mum that Amelie had lost a bit of interest in football and had decided to sit out the remainder of the  season.  Amelie’s mum wanted to emphasize that everyone had treated Amelie well and she had enjoyed herself (and it had nothing to do with the poor coaching) and wished the team all the best for the remainder of the season.  In my opinion Amelie had done so well and was getting better and better all the time.  She had done a great job as the only girl fitting into a team full of boys and adapting to a sport she had never played before.  I wish Amelie all the best and who knows she may come back next season.

We started training with a few handball drills and the quality and effort from the players was very good.  I’m impressed with how serious some of the players are.  Most of them really concentrate and you can tell that they don’t want to make a mistake.

The handball drills expanded into kicking drills and as expected the football started to get sprayed all over the place.  I saw Cambell, Jared, Matthew, Alex, Kobe, Jeremy, Jayden and Caleb doing some good kicks.  I narrowly missed being hit in the head a couple of times as I walked around watching each group.

I got the bump bags out and not surprising some of the players went a bit feral.  I won’t name names but I reckon some of the kids love smashing into the bags more than getting a kick of the football.  It’s all good though because they need to get use to a little bit of physical contact.

Steve took over (much to the player’s delight) and gave the players a competitive goal kicking exercise – which was a pretty good drill, I’d like to do that one again.

We finished training with a bit of match practice which unfortunately I only saw about half of because for some reason every second player was loosing their cool and I had to play peace keeper.  From what I saw it looked like Cambell, Jensen, Jared, Jayden, Jeremy, Dylan and Matthew were playing well.  I do like the intensity of these games, the boys get pretty fired up – we just need to remember that at the end of the day we’re all on the same team.

Another super session by everyone – players, coaches and assistants.  I’m really looking forward to our game versus Piara Waters on Sunday.