Category: Football

Entries about football in general.

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Football

Ireland (0) vs France (1)

Severely disappointed after last nights result. I thought Ireland played well and were undone by a superb goal from Thierry Henry. 🙁 I watched it down my local with the lads and the place was packed. The atmosphere at Landsdowne sounded brilliant and the team got about the French well in the first half. In the second half they stood off a bit and got caught by Henry’s curling shot in the 68th minute. It was a well balanced game but now we need 6 points from the last two games if we want to secure a play-off spot. Here’s hoping.

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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.

Categories
Football

Faroe Islands 0 – Ireland 2

Pretty happy with last nights result in the Faroe Islands. Ireland seemed slightly hungover in the first half from the game on Saturday and a lot of players had bellow par performances. Before the game the media had been reporting on fog which was hampering planes landing and it resulted in at least three plane loads of supporters not being able to make the game. 🙁 Bit of a nightmare when you’ve paid for your ticket and flight.

Ireland got off to a bright start but kept getting caught offside anytime they came forward. The Faroes had a few chances themselves during the first half and came close on a couple of occasions. Shay Given was very alert in goal though and would be my number one target for United as they’ve never truly replaced Schmeichel. Our best chance of the half came when Andy Reid hit a left foot shot from the edge of the box which their goalie couldn’t hold and Stephen Elliott followed up but hit the bar. In fairness to him it was his first competitive start and he got slightly ahead of himself when going to hit the shot.

The second half was much better from Ireland as they played like they should have in the first half. On 52 minutes Elliott was put through with a ball over the top and ran onto it as the goalkeeper hesistated and then brought him down. Ian Harte scored the resulting penalty and it was a relief if nothing else. A short time later, I can’t remember how long to be honest :), Kevin Kilbane shot from the edge of the area but his shot was deflected off Johansson (Faroes captain) and flew past the keeper on his right hand side. It wasn’t a vintage performance by Ireland’s standards but this was all about getting the 3 points and going home. The players have had a long season with their clubs and deserve the break. There’s talk about going to Cyprus in October for the away qualifier but I’ve to look up flight information to see how we’d get there. Hopefully we’ll still be on course for qualification at that stage. 🙂

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Football General

Bank me a holiday

Seen as it’s the bank holiday weekend I thought I’d do a general update on what’s been going on in my life. 🙂 I’ve been shifting lots of stuff out of my room over the past two days in a vain attempt to sort the good from the bad. I’ve currently got a black sack full of old clothes which will be going to a charity shop soon. There’s still tons of old board games and bits of PCs that I need to sort and ship out as I’m sick of holding onto stuff when I have such a small space to live in.

Last night I went down to the local pub, Kenny’s, to watch the Ireland versus Israel match. I’ve never been so disappointed and frustrated in my life. We scored twice within 10 minutes and were cruising before Brian Kerr decided to introduce Kavanagh, a midfield player, for Robbie Keane who’s a striker. The change put the team off balance and they conceded two goals in the space of 7 minutes just before half-time. We then had to contend with their goalkeeper play acting all through the second half. 👿 Fair enough, he got a bash on the nose at one point but the guy was rolling around like someone had chopped his nads off. I’ve never seen such a display in my life and the guy should have been sent off after going for Andy O’Brien’s neck when they fell togetheron the goal line. Instead, O’Brien got sent off!! 🙁 A dodgy ref didn’t help us either by turning away a rake of valid penalty appeals. We have another game against the Faroe Islands on Wednesday but it’s gonna be tough to qualify from where we’re sitting now.

It’s less than 3 weeks before I travel off to Prague for a week with a few of the lads I used to work with. One of the guys, Pavel, is from Czech and invited us over for his 30th party. We all travel out on the Wednesday and come back the following Tuesday. Our accomodation arrangements are fairly loose as we’ll be staying with family friends etc but it sounds like it will be a great few days. 🙂 I also got word from my uncle that I can have his holiday home for ten days in August. Myself, Mark and maybe Hugh will be going so the arrangements will be solidified over the coming week and then I’ll book the Aer Lingus flights.