Category: Dunboyne AFC

Entries related to Dunboyne AFC where I was a coach for three years 2006-2009.

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Dunboyne AFC General

Since Wednesday

This is one of those updates. 🙂

  • On Wednesday night I went down to the pub to watch Ireland but on a mediocre display against Switzerland. They didn’t do much and probably didn’t deserve to go through. A million and one punters have now had their say so I’m not going to add my 2 cents in. Alas, I was disappointed along with the rest of the country.
  • Thursday night was spent in the International Comedy Club in Dublin laughing at: Aidan Bishop, Dermot McMorrow, Tommy Nicholson and David O’Doherty. The place was absolutely jammers (full for those who aren’t Irish :wink:) with people and they all put on a great show. I’m going to see David O’Doherty again this week as he’s doing a standalone series of shows in the Project Arts Centre in Temple Bar. If you live in Dublin then go, you will be highly entertained.
  • Yesterday I was due to attend TechCamp but wasn’t feeling at all well on Friday so I decided not to go. By all accounts it was quite good and I’m sorry I had to miss it. Last night I went down to the pub with Dave for a few drinks. We discovered a disco bar that we thought had closed in one of the bars which was nice. Stayed there for the night and rambled home around 1.
  • This morning the Dunboyne team had a game against Swords Celtic. We lost the game heavily but we always seem to do that at the start of the season. 🙂 This was our first game and the lack of fitness showed. Tomorrow I’ll be doing laps to start getting them match fit. They need a serious trainer to give them the skills work though as I just don’t have the experience yet.

Tonight I’ll be wandering along to see Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. It looks fantastic and the reviews have been glowing. Unfortunately most of the back catalogue of models and scenery was destroyed last week in a fire at the main store house. The fire was still burning on Friday 🙁

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Dunboyne AFC Football

Game Off

Bit late in writing this up considering it’s Wednesday but last Sunday’s trip out to Laytown was a complete waste of time. We were due to play East Meath United away so I thought East Meath United would be pretty close to Dunboyne. Turns out it was at least an hours drive north-east out to Laytown. After asking lots of people where Laytown actually was, we arrived and noticied a game already in progress. Turns out the league changed the fixture without informing our club. 👿 Cue lots of disappointment from the players. We barely had the 11 players out due to a shortage at the moment so situations like this really don’t help.

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Dunboyne AFC Football

A new season starts

Had my first training session with the team from Dunboyne last night. For anyone not in the know, I train and manage a team of 15 year old lads at Dunboyne AFC. I manage the 15C team. Last season I was a bit frustrated in that I couldn’t properly train the team on fitness and skills as I didn’t know any drills etc. I began sorting that out over the summer by taking the “Kickstart Level 1” coaching course that is run by the FAI. The course was great fun and gave me a lot of great tips on how to deal with and plan the training sessions. I still have a long way to go and there’s another course on in October.

After the training session finished last night, two of the managers from the 15As team were waiting to have a chat. They wanted to transfer two of my players up to their team and I agreed as you can’t really stand in the way of the lads development. I wished them the best and they’ll be in good company as two other players from my team last year have already moved up to the A team (:smile:) over the summer. It may leave us tight on numbers this year but I may be able to borrow players for games if we’re short. The first game is this Sunday against East Meath United so there’ll be a report from that.

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Dunboyne AFC

Dunboyne Vs Baldoyle United

This is a direct cut and paste job from the report I sent up for the club web site. All in all it was a solid performance. 🙂

Dunboyne AFC vs Baldoyle United

The Dunboyne lads had been looking forward to this one after a questionable loss to Baldoyle two months prior to this fixture and weren’t to be disappointed. In contrast to the weather at the return fixture it was blue skys as Dunboyne took the pitch hoping to maintain their recent good form. Irvine Ferris filled in at right back in a reconfigured defense in the absense of Alan Cosgrave. The game started well for the team with a couple of through balls just being over hit slightly. Ten minutes in the breakthrough came as Darren Jordan broke down the left and finished well as the keeper advanced. We were one nil up and the squads confidence grew.

Five minutes later we were two up with another break down the left again finished by Darren Jordan who was having an excellent game. Baldoyle responded and tested the defense on the wings with Conor O’Shea showing good commitment with a number of key challenges. However, Dunboyne had their backs up and broke with John Kennedy passing to Oisin Feeney who fed a lofted ball through to Damien Yourell who finished well. Dunboyne then had to soak up a lot of pressure as Baldoyle tried everything and their goal came after a frantic goal mouth scramble was only half cleared and the ensuing cross was finished off. 3 – 1 at half time.

The second half was much calmer from Dunboyne with the aim of holding on to a solid lead and consolidating our place in the table. Unfortunately Baldoyle got a goal back after the defense was exposed on the right side and nerves could have set in. Five minutes after Baldoyle’s second goal, Dunboyne grabbed their fourth with a good pass brought on by Padraig Gleeson and smashed to the back of the net. James Duffy made a couple of good saves in the closing minutes to keep the gap and the under 14s had another confidence boosting win under their belts. Onwards and upwards!

Squad: James Duffy, Irvine Ferris, Conor O’Shea, Oisin Feeney, Niall Gallagher, John Kennedy, Padraig Gleeson, Paul Booth, Darren Jordan, Damien Yourell, Colm Darcy, Robert Braerton

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Dunboyne AFC

Rotoath Harps Vs Dunboyne AFC

Here’s the report I filed with the club web sitea about the Ratoath game yesterday:

The Dunboyne Under 14 D’s turned in a great performance in this local derby against Rotoath Harps. Dunboyne were boosted by the return to the team of a number of players and were resolute in their will to fight for the ball in all areas of the pitch. Chances were sparse in the game with most of the action taking place in midfield for the majority of the first half. In the second half Dunboyne’s defense battled well to keep Rotoath at bay on a number of occasions with Conor O’Shea (Man of the Match) and Alan Cosgrave making numerous key interceptions and challenges.

Dunboyne eventually made the breakthrough when Darren Jordan was put through on goal and drilled a low shot under the keeper. After that Dunboyne soaked up the pressure as Roatoath pushed for an equaliser. It came twenty minutes from the end as a break down the right exposed the defense and a low shot beat James Duffy who had done well to keep them at bay beforehand. Dunboyne nearly stole all three points when Colm Darcy’s right foot shot dropped just wide but overall a draw was a fair result for both teams in what was a great local derby. The team continue to get better and hope to continue the improvement next week against Huntstownvilla.

Overall I was impressed with their attitude yesterday. I’m desperately trying to get them to act as a team but its tough when some of them play two and three sports which dillutes their sense of unity with our team specifically. Hopefully this is the start of the turn-around anyway as I haven’t been filing reports about ten-nil drubbings away.