Day 55

Back to work.

The last few days have been good but it was time to get back to the coaching. This week is mainly new schools, crèches and clubs. Today we started with a crèche near to Riverton where we had been the last few weeks. This area is a mostly coloured community but the teacher told us that the majority of children at this crèche are coming from mainly black areas like Khayelitsha, also a few of the children are from other countries. They are taken to this crèche just before they start school in order to learn English, the teacher said it is a struggle, the kids from other countries speak mainly French and the type of Afrikaans they speak is not spoken by any of the teachers. Good luck to us then.

We had 3 classes of 25 kids ranging from 4-6 year olds. As they were young and weren't great with English or our accents we decided to stick to our simple activities and games. Firstly the movement game followed by the passing of a ball around the circle. All groups were quite shy and it was hard work getting them involved but we did it. To add to our difficulties a few of the boys were quite disruptive. We got there in the end. Hopefully like most of the crèches given time they will get used to us.

We returned to the learning centre briefly sorted a few things, had lunch and checked emails. Then we were off again. This time to Mitchell's Plain, an area we had been through but not coached in. We were at a new school, we were given the under 14s/15s/17s/19s all mixed together with around 32 kids in total. We started off with rondos, moved onto team possession in an area then matches. All the boys had kit, had boots and were of a good standard which was nice. Probably 1 of our better sessions. Football in this area is quite big and apparently they have a good league and matches set up. 3 of the boys were Ajax academy players so that was the sort of player we were coaching today.

We then head back, Arsenal vs Monaco tonight, we need to win by 3 goals. We've never lost to a French team away, Wenger going back to his old club, and Monaco having 1 of the best defences in Europe means it should be a good game.