Forgot to write up a report for the game last Saturday so only getting to it now. 🙂 A tight game for us by all accounts. Had a full turn out of 11 players and we arrived at their pitch early so we went through a light warm up. The pitch they played on had a slight downhill angle on it and we played that way in the first half. Chances for us were few and far between unfortunately and I knew we’d have a hard time coping with their pace and passing. Knocklyn had a few chances here and there but we kept them at bay without too many scares. The second half would be tougher though and we must have weathered maybe 3/4 goal mouth scrambles most of which our goalie did extremely well to smoother. He’s really coming into his own and deserves a lot of credit for keeping a clean sheet against, what turned out to be, the league leaders. A progression from our last game and the first points of the season. Hopefully it’s a home game this week so we can rally some additional support.
Category: Football
Entries about football in general.
Disappointing result this morning. I’m not too sure how much I’ve explained about the coaching I’ve been doing over the past few months but here’s a brief outline. Around mid-September I started to coach an under 10s team from Dunboyne AFC. Some readers (if there are any ;)) may remember I used to coach a 13s side from the same club. Since September we’ve been playing games and training pretty regularly. They are the third team of their age group at the club so most of them aren’t natural footballers but they give it their all. The weather over the Christmas period and most of January has been quite bad so we haven’t had a game in almost 7 weeks. That brings us to this morning….
All we knew of Mount Merrion was that they are the team above us in the league so we knew it’d be a tight game. There are a few teams in the league who get hockey scores every game. They’re the type of football clubs who can fill 2/3 teams with quality players at any age group. They probably train harder and take it more seriously so fair play to them. The game with Merrion was, as we thought, a balanced affair but unfortunately we gave away two sloppy goals in the first half. They don’t have the best positional awareness at this age so we left players free for the goals. We can work on that though. The start of the second half was much better and we pushed on. Rob got a break of a ball from one of their defenders and did really well to hit a left foot shot past their keeper into the top corner. The rest of the half was very scrappy and we couldn’t find an equaliser. A positive point from the game was the fact that the lads (and girls) didn’t stop running and after a lengthy lay-off that’s an achievement. The first victory is coming. 🙂
Categories
So I says to Mable, I says….
Bit of a blogging hiatus so a few bits to update on and what better way than to do that than a bulleted list:
- The pic above was taken with my new Sony Ericsson k800i cameraphone. The camera on it is 3.2 megapixel so it’s a bit of a step up from the k750i which was 2. So far I’m very happy with it and I’ll be doing a full post on it in the near future.
- I’ve taken on a new team out at Dunboyne AFC. They’re an under 10 group and we had a training session on Thursday before the first game today. They’re not a bad side and I reckon they’ll do quite well with a bit of coaching. They lost 2-0 today but played with lots of heart against the second team in the league.
- Got free tickets to see Borat next Tuesday in UCI. Hat tip to Damien Mulley for linking to it.
- I saw Sandi Thom on Tuesday at the Village. Very good gig and I stuck up some photos. Come to think of it, I’ve uploaded a good few photos today plus more stuff to YouTube for the coming days.
and finally a video from footie last night…..
Well there has been a legitimate reason why I haven’t posted over the past few days. On Tuesday I travelled to Manchester for Roy Keane’s testimonial game. For those unfamiliar with Keano’s career there’s an excellent entry on Wikipedia. Needless to say he’s a legend. A mate from work, Rob, got us tickets through the Celtic Supporters Club he’s in. As Keano is now at Celtic, the game was between the two clubs and he’d play a half for each team.
The day started early as the bus to the ferry picked us up at 6.30am to get to Dublin Port. After a bus transfer to Manchester from Holyhead we arrived at about 4. We rambled into the city centre after dropping our bags at the hostel and then made our way out to Old Trafford. 
We packed onto a crammed tram and sweated our bodyweights out of us over the next 10 minutes. Not a nice experience. Found a decent pub close to the ground called “The Trafford”. The pub itself was mobbed with supporters but the atmosphere was great.
The game itself was due to kick off at 8 so we walked up to the ground and got our seats in the North Stand. United had allocated the whole of the stand to Celtic supporters as they always travel in numbers. The atmosphere created by close to 30,000 Celtic supporters is beyond description. When Keane emerged onto the pitch flanked by both teams in a guard of honour, the stadium erupted with the staple “Keano, Keano, Keano” chant ringing out at deafening volume. 
It was a special night for him and every supporter in the ground who’d turned up to honour Ireland’s best player. Throughout the game, while playing for United and Celtic, Keane played his classic style and didn’t hold back in lambasting his teammates on a number of occasions. 🙂
United went on to win with a goal from Christiano Ronaldo just after half time but the result wasn’t important to either sets of supporters. Keane took the microphone at the end and did a lap of honour to a massive ovation. We left the ground and headed into Manchester for a night on the town. Great experience and I’ll be going to see Celtic in the Champions League next season if I can get a ticket. 
All of the photos are uploaded if you wanna view them.
…Christmas obviously. We had the work do down in the Johnstown Inn Hotel on Monday night. It went really well and I was quite impressed with the size of my bed. Most of the staff got stuck with single beds but some lucky souls, including yours truly, got a king size bed. 🙂 The night itself was great as we got a lovely three course meal and then got thrown out of a function we were invited into by another company. 😕 Long story, turns out some of the women who work in our office are “too good looking”.
Was down in the local with Mark tonight watching the Man Utd vs Wigan game. With the run of luck United have been having lately I didn’t expect much and it seemed we were in for a tough one with the form Wigan’s goalkeeper was in. Luckily they got the breakthrough with Rio Ferdinand’s first goal for United on the half hour. Wayne Rooney then scored two before Van Nistelrooy sealed the win with a penalty. Good result but more to be done.
Pretty busy over the next few days so expect a few entries by the weekend.