It is now the end of the season - impact on training

Well done everyone on a rewarding season.  I enjoyed Sunday’s game a lot, as we had played our first match in September against that team, and had a promising start there, with lots of room for improvement, so I wanted to play them again, to see what improvement we had made.

And I was very pleased with what I saw, we were so much better and competitive in all areas of the pitch than we had been before, played with so much more speed and precision, so lots of pleasing development out there.  Despite us having a side with some stand ins, our regular players performed excellently, and we have moved so far ahead from where we were.  

The final 2 - 4 score was a little disappointing, after we had taken the lead 2 - 0, but we had a goal disallowed that mystified me why, and John let in a couple of goals that he would have saved with more recent keeper practice, and Long would have saved, but I was letting Long have a run of a friendly game outfield, which proved to lose us the game, as we would have drawn 2 - 2, or won 2 - 1 if we had played the game with Long in goal from the begining.  However we will give John lots more keeping practice in training.  Thanks to John for stepping into goal so unexpectedly on Sunday, in training we will give John lots of keeping practice, so he learns about getting his body behind shots, and timing the interceptions. 

We played with Sam J and Luke in defence, with two other defenders who were step ins to our side, and a keeper who didnt normally play for us,  so fielded only two of our five defensive players, yet we still looked very sharp, winning the midfield area, and looking creative up front with Cian and Donny and Sam T and Ben working well together. 

I was particularly pleased with our strong start to the match, going ahead 2 - 0 in the first half.  As we know, we had poor first halves in recent games, followed by great second halves, so I was keen to have a much harder warm up before this match so we started the game more strongly, and the stretching, sprinting, and passing the ball round in squares meant we started much more sharply than the opposition on Sunday.  So we will stick to the high energy match build up.  Our second half was a slower start, so maybe next game we can do a similar high energy build up at half time. 

I was also delighted with how we shut out their best player, who back in September had controlled lots of the game.   I know Luke and Sam had a tough game, having to play with stand ins beside them, but our defence looked strong which was pleasing, so I hope Luke and Sam know how well they did on Sunday and are as pleased as I am with their performance.

I liked Donny’s play on the left, it didnt undermine his play at all to be on that side, and I always like the way he brings other players into the game, with some very good and accurate passes to either side. 

Having Donny back for corners is an important change for us, as there was one clearance from a corner that showed how that becomes something that turns defence into attack, as he was back defending, then we got the ball, and it was passed to Donny and he ran from our half deep into their half, so was totally involved, instead of being cut off in attack waiting for a pass if we cleared the corner.  With the extra number of headed goals, having Donny’s height in defence for corners will save us several goals a season for sure.   

Now that we have come to the end of the season, I was planning to have a complete break of a month, as we have all put so much time and effort into the season, so I know that a break from football can be a good thing.

However, to balance that, I know we also need more experience, to make up for lost time and to catch up with the other teams who have been together for five and six years now. 

Also it is good for the boys to keep in touch during the summer.

Our training games against Eltham Progress are extremely helpful, and they have made me decide to keep training all through the summer.  They start their training at 6.30, and train till 8.00.  They are ready to start their training games against us at 7.20, as that gives them 50 minutes training, and 40 minutes match.

We start at 6.00, and use the first  hour and 20 minutes to have a mix of training and talk, such as us all discussing the contents of the newsletter, and ideas and suggestions from the team,as I know by the end of the week, we dont benefit from two solid non stop running!   So I am pacing the first eighty minutes carefully, with lots of breaks, especially while the weather is so hot. 

So overall, it is best to get there for 6.00, but as the training game is 7.20, don’t worry if you can’t be precisely on time for the 6.00 start, as the 7.20 -8.00 part is the key part of the session.   

I wont be setting up any games on Sundays for a while, as it is fine for us to play on the Friday, but with a busy season ahead, we can have a break from weekend football, apart from the 1 June 9 a side tournament we are in.

The matches we play show areas we need to work on in training, I was pleased how our centres on Sunday were forwards and attacking, just as we had worked on in training.  I have noticed in our past two games how all of a sudden lots of goals are scored by headers which hardly happened before for or against us, so training of headers and volleys will help develop that.  We also will be working on defending from headers, as we have conceded a number of goals recently, often because the player marking one of theirs goalside is shorter than the player being marked, so we need to make sure we pick a player to mark who is the same size as us. 

So we have done the hard work, now we are in the relaxed end of season part of the footballing year, where we have done really well at adding all the new players to our team since last summer, so can now enjoy how much we have developed, with our focus on winning promotion next Season, or making a move over to the Bexley League B if we dont win automatic promotion. 

Our game on Sunday once again showed how we are ready for that B level, as the team we played had done well in their autumn division, missing out on promotion to the A Division by just six points, so yet again we had a sound performance against a good team, despite us playing without Long in goal, or Billy, Enes, and Michael.   

So a very satisfying end to our season, well done everyone!!! A rollercoaster of a football year, but we have all learned a lot.