When I arrived this morning at the backword game I had been given on Friday, I saw the nets weren't up and the home team, who are usually changed and warming up sometimes as early as 45 minutes before kick off, were standing about in the car park, still in their "day" clothes. When their manager gave me a "cutting the grass" signal, I didn't think he was suggesting anything about my gardening prowess and it was with dismay that I found out my season was finishing, as it had started back in January at the same ground, with a postponement.
I decide not to insist they collected up all their subs and paid me in 10p pieces, but reported the facts to the League Secretary when I got home. Well the truth is that I got halfway through the report when the phone rang. It was one of the senior players for another Premier Division team reporting that their referee hadn't turned up - where is the commitment of these match officials? - could I help?
I jumped back in the car and made my way to their ground and found their opponents were the team who had phoned on Tuesday night when their referee hadn't turned up! We kicked off in bright sunshine with blue skies overhead and the temperature around 23C and I had no sunscreen on my freshly shaved head.
The game went well with only a couple of disputed decisions, but we did have a player suffer an injury to his ankle. He tried to turn and move into space on 19 minutes to receive a pass from a team mate but his ankle cracked and he worried he had broken it. The away team manager was the first on the scene when I summoned help and he spent quite some time tending to the player once he had been removed from the field before the player gingerly moved around to what passed for his team's technical area (not marked out for Sunday League football).
The game finished 5-3 to the away team which allowed them to leapfrog the home team and move into 3rd place. Everyone went home friends and I went home fried! The afternoon was supposed to have been spent watching the League Two Play Off Final, but instead I ran around buying up supplies for my first outdoor cooking session of the close season. Needless to say I'm unlikely to start my pre-season training tomorrow as planned and it seems Wednesday will see me take an easy jog to break myself in gently.
So whatever you are getting up to in the close season and I know WRCFA School of Excellence has two trips planned (Lisboa Cup, Portugal and the Aarhus Cup, Denmark?), I hope your training goes well, those of you who have fitness tests pass them without any problems and we'll do it all again from August onwards.
See my cooking skills in action ...
Continue reading...
I decide not to insist they collected up all their subs and paid me in 10p pieces, but reported the facts to the League Secretary when I got home. Well the truth is that I got halfway through the report when the phone rang. It was one of the senior players for another Premier Division team reporting that their referee hadn't turned up - where is the commitment of these match officials? - could I help?
I jumped back in the car and made my way to their ground and found their opponents were the team who had phoned on Tuesday night when their referee hadn't turned up! We kicked off in bright sunshine with blue skies overhead and the temperature around 23C and I had no sunscreen on my freshly shaved head.
The game went well with only a couple of disputed decisions, but we did have a player suffer an injury to his ankle. He tried to turn and move into space on 19 minutes to receive a pass from a team mate but his ankle cracked and he worried he had broken it. The away team manager was the first on the scene when I summoned help and he spent quite some time tending to the player once he had been removed from the field before the player gingerly moved around to what passed for his team's technical area (not marked out for Sunday League football).
The game finished 5-3 to the away team which allowed them to leapfrog the home team and move into 3rd place. Everyone went home friends and I went home fried! The afternoon was supposed to have been spent watching the League Two Play Off Final, but instead I ran around buying up supplies for my first outdoor cooking session of the close season. Needless to say I'm unlikely to start my pre-season training tomorrow as planned and it seems Wednesday will see me take an easy jog to break myself in gently.
So whatever you are getting up to in the close season and I know WRCFA School of Excellence has two trips planned (Lisboa Cup, Portugal and the Aarhus Cup, Denmark?), I hope your training goes well, those of you who have fitness tests pass them without any problems and we'll do it all again from August onwards.
See my cooking skills in action ...
Continue reading...
