We both got ready and headed out for our daily run, we have now increased the distance to roughly 5km, I say roughly because Harry looked up the route on his phone and it says 1 lap is a 1km but I'm not entirely convinced. It does have a very steep part though and with the heat it is quite difficult, but in 5 weeks we've gone from struggling through 1 lap to doing 5 with some ease. Quite happy with that, improving the fitness levels, hopefully going home and running on flat ground in cooler temperatures should now be a lot easier.
We then had showers got ready and jumped in the car. We were stuck in a bit of traffic not helped by some of the traffic lights being out because of the electricity being switched off. We eventually arrived only slightly late. Joe wasn't even there, he arrived just after us, he'd had the morning off as he was working late with us tonight. We left the centre around 3:30 we went and did some shopping and then headed to Somerset West area I think it was called. We were coaching a team called De Beers, we originally weren't supposed to be coaching here, but 1 of the kids parents own a farm and bottles up fresh juice, she had donated some juice to 1 of Joes events free of charge so in return Joe offered us to her sons team. I've noticed that a lot over here, people really want to help each other and a favour is always returned by another.
We were led down a gravel path then through a herd of cows and arrived at the club house. Nice little set up, goals, footballs, pitches and a big club house. We were taken to meet the coaches by Fiona, the juice lady. After a few jokes about last nights game, I'll get it out the way, we lost 3-1 we were absolutely awful, but as I'm writing this Spurs have just been knocked out of the Europa League, we were told there were 3 groups and asked how we would like to do the session. After some discussion I took the under 9s and Harry took the 2 smaller groups of under 10s and 11s.
We had completely different sessions, Harry was a spectator for most of his session as the under 11 coach took over where as I was given the whole session. I'm going to be honest Harry is the better coach, he's the better footballer and wants to continue coaching and take it as far as he can, which is why I got a bit nervous about taking a session on my own with 3 coaches standing around watching and 2 of them were taking notes. My sessions are based around having fun but with purpose. I took a short warm up, at that age a warm up isn't really important but it's good practice and I used it to see what sort of group they were, I did a warm up a lot of people use, jogging around, shout out a number and the number relates to an action, header, touch the ground, sprint etc. They were a good group well behaved and followed instructions. I then did a passing session, all the boys stood in a circle passing across, I progressed to following your pass then onto a running around the outside while the ball is passed around progression. The last proved slightly difficult for the age group but they were laughing and having fun which was important. Lots of them were easily distracted and stood looking into the distance with hands on hips so I made a rule that if they stood there with their hands like that they'd have to do a 'chicken dance' I hope Joe took a photo of them doing it. As silly as it seemed by the end of the session the message had got across and when asked what they had learnt 1 boy said 'the chicken dance' I asked for more information and was told 'you always need to be concentrating and ready or you'll lose the ball' I was quite impressed. We finished the session with a possession game and then a match. The kids said they had fun and then the coach walked over, to be honest I didn't know what he was going to say, he had been taking notes probably expecting a serious session with lots of drills, but he said he was really impressed and that he liked my approach and how I used fun elements to get points across. Joe said he had also said to him that he had enjoyed my session which was really pleasing. I really enjoy this age group because you can have that little bit of fun but also because they are still very early on in their development.
Harry on the other hand ended up doing 15 minutes of a session and wasn't too impressed with the coach he had worked with. He doesn't seem to get any luck, we've been split up 3 times, 1st a kid gets stamped on, blood everywhere and he has to see to it, 2nd the tournament where the other coach tried to interfere and change the whole format when Harry was running it and 3rd today when the coach wouldn't let him do much. Oh well hope his luck changes.
We then had the journey home down what Joe called an unsafe area, both sides of the N2 were covered in those shacks you've probably seen on tv when they talk about the poorer side of Africa. 1 side was Khayelitsha, 1 of the biggest black townships in Cape Town, I won't go into details, let's just say you probably wouldn't take a nice walk through there, and people are advised if you breakdown whilst driving past to just carry on as far as you possibly can even if you do more damage than good, we have visited the area with Joe previously to see Grassroots soccer and I will not be rushing back.
Anyway home safe now and the week is nearly over, 1 more session to go and then the start of the Communicare league on Saturday, it's not been a bad week which is good.
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