Return to the field. Or How my body is beginning to betray me

This here digi-tome has mentioned my efforts at coaching. I took the Mighty U13s to third 2 years ago, and last year the same boys (or mostly) went down 1-0 in the GF. This year I have taken on another squad of Mighty U13s, a new assistant supercoach and a different set of strengths and weaknesses. So far so good, one win, one loss, one draw. The team hasn't really played to its potential yet, but I have faith that they will finish the season strongly.

But even more importantly than my sideline encouragements and masterminding puppetry of young footballers is my own return to the park.

Moving back to West Bubblefuck four years ago, I was devastated to learn that there was no women's football competition. I think the words I actually spake (I'm teaching Shakespeare at the moment, and it is affecting my vocab) were "What kind of a backwards town am I living in?!" At the end of each game of coaching for the last two years I have ended up bubbling with unspent adrenaline, and each week I made a small curse (silently or otherwise) that there was no comp I could play in to spend the pent up energy. Sure, I could play with the blokes, but my serious lack of fitness kind of embarrassed me out of that.

This year, the West Bubblefuck District Football Association has finally got a 6 a side comp off the ground. Just.

In the last two months I have been palpable in my desperation to find players. I emailed parents, I mentioned it in almost every conversation "Do you know anyone that might be interested in playing women's soccer?" West Bubblefuck has a really great culture of sport - a thriving netball comp, a really successful basketball comp, hockey, tennis, austag AND touch, indoor mixed soccer, cricket and netball... West Bubblefuck women play a number of sports, and tend to keep playing them until their bodies betray them. As mine may well currently be doing.

Yes I have been getting my competitive kicks with the Flames on the baskeball court for a little over a year. But this has led to various joints of mine deciding they will no longer operate at 100%.

Betrayal.

But I have loved the round ball game dearly for over 15 years, and it is where  my sporting heart truly lies. Despite the fact that Sparky despises the game in an unworldly kind of way. So when I managed to get 7 ladies together, I contacted a club and poached a few more players, helped to coordinate a SECOND team and became a part of a women's football comp in my backwards town.

But then of course, not everyone could make it this week.

I showed up with 3 other girls, hoping desperately for some juniors to help us out. We found one. And then sneakily poached one of the keepers from our opposition.

Since I dinged my shoulder a month ago, I haven't graced the basketball court. I haven't been to body balance, or to the gym at all. I may have walked the dog a few times, but nothing that was really strenuous. Within three minutes of kick off, I was scraping the bottom of my lungs for breath. Turns out, a complete lack of exercise leads to a seriously diminished fitness. Who knew?

Betrayal.

I was delighted to be playing a shortened game. 30 minute halves instead of 45. Six a side instead of 11. Half field. As it was, I was wheezing and doing so much field walking that if I was COACHING me, I would have given myself a total blast at half time. Imagine if I had played the real mccoy? At the end of the hour, I was already aching. My stupid basketballed ankle was moaning, my niggly basketballed shoulder was whining (from the throw ins).

Betrayal.

As I limped to my car, my calves started to seize, and the burn set in to my quads.

Betrayal.

Delayed onset muscle soreness - which the professionals call DOMS, but I like to call Second Day Syndrome - will ensure that tomorrow I will be tight and achy. And even worse on Monday I will find it difficult to walk.

Betrayal once more.
But despite the fact that my body is kicking me back, and despite the fact that my team went down 6-0, and despite the fact that half a dozen dudes from The Boy Factory sat on the side line as a witness to my defeat (against the team in black and white, and against my body) setting my humliation up for further discussion over the course of the week, I had such a brilliant time.

I just hope I can get my body to work with me a little better next week. The South West Bubblefuck Womens Green Machine has started its epic journey and I hope it is long and fruitful and rich in great football.

The quest for an 'S' on my chest

Amidst the Football Fever that has taken over the world (not just the town, or the state, or the country... as OTHER football fevers (note:lower case) have done before), the Mighty U14s took to the park today for the first time in a month. And while I have enjoyed my Saturday mornings to myself, I have missed them playing. Have missed barking instructions from a sideline, and have missed getting to the end of a fairly fruitless hour, full of adrenaline and frustration.

Unfortunately, there are only 4 teams in our division this year. Which means there is only 3 weeks in each round, and we revisit the same faces quite frequently. Again, contributing to the frustration.

And when one of my midfield rep-player stars has a heel injury that we are waiting to heal (that would be the 5th time I have made that lame joke... but the first time I have made that one), and when my stopper injured his back last night at rugby, and my sweeper's thumb is being "gay" (I am interpreting this as "not straight", for fear of launching in to another lecture), and one of my strikers got belted square in the eye by a now suspended Year 10 thug... We weren't fielding a team running at full strength. And ended up drawing 2-2, when on paper we really should have run away with it.

Interestingly, both teams seem to have been watching plenty of SBS. So much diving and tumbling, and even a little bit of too-far-up-the-field offside-traps reminiscent of Lucas Neill. An ex-Mighty U13 player even got a yellow card. Good to see the boys are as inspired as I am by the World Cup.

Last year, we started weak, and the Mighty U13s built and grew over the season to finish 3rd on the ladder. This year, we started really strong. Our first cut was the deepest. And since then, we have hardly scratched the surface.

I quite like to refer to my sidekick and myself as Supercoaches. But I fear this title is not deserved at this stage...

Supercoach Out. For now...

The innaugural season as Supercoach is over. The Mighty U13s did an amazing job this year of turning from 14 kids who didn't know each other to a force to be reckoned with in the U13s West Bubblefuck District Soccer competition.

The highlight of this winter really was working with these boys. Oh, and that weekend that Erin came to stay was a highlight too... But really these boys were brilliant to work with. We went from 5th to 3rd in the comp in the last round. We won a game 10-0. We reduced our margins of defeat against the top teams, and fought successfully against the middle order. I lost my voice at least half a dozen times. The boys learned to share, developed a hatred of the hill sprints and worked their way to playing some beautiful football. And the concept of 150% has entered the U13s lexicon.

I'm hoping I get most of them back again next year - though I will probably lose my Supercoach Sidekick (don't tell him I called him that - I don't think he'd like it). The Mighty U14s could take over the world.

The World Game

I love sport. For some reason, I got all the sport loving genes, and my little bro got none. At all.

I love to watch sport, to play sport (but only with a round ball), to talk shit about sport (and attempt to keep up with the sport-shit-talking athletes that are my friends).

And while I think that Australia, and more specifically The Boy Factory, puts too much credence on Sport in general, I do think it is important. It is a pretty amazing feature of our culture. A unifying force in a community. Sport has the ability to create a sense of Belonging (there's that word again...), a sense of family, a sense of common purpose. And yes, it is a crutch that we as a young nation lean upon too heavily to define ourselves. And yes, there are many other facets of our culture and our community that deserve as much or more airplay than sport does.

But I still love it.

And the game I think I love the most, is the Real Football. The one you play with your feet. The World Game. Soccer.

I was once a Sweeper for the Avalon Open Womens seconds team (and later played this for Baxter College girlies). I have never had a huge amount of pace, or ball skill. But I like to think I made up for this in determination to defend - which I can't seem to summon in attack (turns out I work better under conditions of desperation) - and my ample voice - and ability to boss people around.

One of The Most Disappointing things about moving Back To West Bubblefuck is the fact that there is NO women's soccer comp. And while I always talk about West Bubblefuck being a backward hick town (as, indeed, I am right now), I actually think it is big enough to support at least one division of women's football. (Yes, there is a mixed indoor comp, which reminds me I should try to reconnect with that...).

And in order to get a fix of football in my life, I am the Proud Coach of the Mighty Under 13s, who are actually not doing all that badly considering they haven't played together very long, and they don't play as a team until about half way through the second half. I love my boys, and I love prowling the side line on a sunny winter's day, belowing instructions. Even if it does mean a death to weekends away for duration of the season.

West Bubblefuck, and again, in particular, The Boy Factory, doesn't hold Soccer in the highest of esteem. It is "the pussy sport", "the girly game", "faggot ball". This same level of scorn is only reserved for gAyFL. Not only does it show their small mindedness when it comes to sports of the less ruck-and-maul nature, but it also reveals their less-than-latent sexism and homophobia.

The only other fix is watching the game on tele. And seeing as pay tv is a bit like a dirty word in our house, I can't watch the A League. And bloody Fox poached the World Cup Qualifiers from SBS, thwarting my democratic right to watch my national team play.

They have never been a pretty team to watch. Scrappy and argy-bargy with barely a tenuous hold on the ball everytime it comes their way. But I love them anyway. I missed the Qatar game, mostly because it was after my bed time. And I missed the Bahrain (sp?) one because I was exhausted, it was the middle of Report Hunting Season and our family fleet of cars was so depleted that I couldn't get into town to a pub if I wanted to.

So then we played Japan. The Rivals of the Pacific Rim. And despite the fact that friends to accompany me to the pub are fairly thin on the ground in Tamworth, I was determined to watch it. So I took my dad to the Longyard for an overpriced steak, to sit in front of a flat screen to watch the game.

We were the ONLY ones watching it in the first half. For the first 15 minutes, we couldn't get a picture for more than 2 and a half minutes at a time, interspersed with info screens about faults of smartcards of some bullshit. Faulty Austar smartcards (misnomer, anyone?) would NEVER happen during a Socceroos game. But in backwaters like West Bubblefuck, the chances of watching Your National Team play one of the other biggest teams in Asia (cause we're in Asia, now, didn't you know?) whittle away to zilch. Finally Dad got the ex-student from behind the bar to accost another customer into solving the problem.

And the game was as I expected. Scrappy. Messy. Frustrating. A little bit like watching the Mighty U13s, with the big kicks forward to nobody, and the honeypot bunching. Japan were a better team on the day. Our goals were incredibly lucky, with Timmy Cahill - or as Pim calls him The Phantom, or as my Sidekick Supercoach says "he deserves a lycra suit and a cape and a big S on his chest" - being in the perfect place at the perfect time with the perfect hit.

But then the Japanese goal was similarly lucky.

I went home a happy little soccer fan.

Let's hope tomorrow brings a similarly happy soccer Supercoach!

Under 13. Underwhelmed.

I love football. The one with the round ball that you play with your feet.

(Yes, that would be soccer)

I haven't played comp for a number of years (I think it has almost passed the counting on both hands stage, actually) and college hangover soccer doesn't quite count. I was most disappointed that a city the size of West Bubblefuck doesn't have a women's comp!!!! Incredibly annoying.

So I settle for coaching. Attempting to obtain myself Yet Another Alter Ego... Supercoach.

I have a lovely little team of Under 13 football players, with a wide range of experience (from the rep players to those who have only chased sheep before) and an equally wide range of fitness.
I have been given the gig by myself and so enlisted the help of a Y12 kid - who very soon after was long term suspended for like 2 month and so had to be replaced with another (more reliable) Y12 kid, who shall hence be known as Sidekick (though I'm sure he would hate that moniker (if he even knew what moniker meant)). Sidekick is great with the boys, with just the right amount of carrot and stick (more with the carrot and less with the stick), and it is fantastic when I have taught all day for him to run the Thursday trainings and sort out the team on Saturdays.

Yes of course, I am the most unfit person involved in the team, but they are 13 year old boys, and I am more than twice their age and have more vices than they could poke a stick at, so I am not self conscious about it at all (can't you tell?). They have some wicked skills amongst them, with some kids seeming mild and meek off the field but fiesty demons in shiny shorts on the grass. So their fitness. Needs work.

Those who know me will realise that a Morning Person I am not. And yet. I organised to take the boarders from The Boy Factory on a morning "run" (while I walk the dog) on 2 mornings a week. It started last week on Wednesday. It was fantastic.

Then we went to The Other Boy Factory in Slightly Further East Bubblefuck, and totally trounced their soccer team 5-1, with the boys playing like a proper team, even if it was in teeming freezing rain, with the goal mouth more like a lake than a park.

Saturday's game was a different story, with them NOT listening to game plans. NOT listening to instructions bellowed from the sideline (Alter Ego Supercoach draws heavily from Alter Ego Little Voice). Kicking high balls into fierce winds and failing terribly against the West Bubblefuck Rep Side.

Sidekick gave their arses a good kicking in the half time rant. "I know youse are tired, but if youse aren't going to listen to me, there is plenty of other things I could be doing on a Saturday". The arse kicking worked, and they lifted their game.

And to this morning. I hauled my sorry self out of slumber to take them on a turn around the grounds. Naj (the dog) was delighted as ever. And 2 kids showed.

Disappointment. If it was a colour, I think it would be mustardy. And pale.

I still walked the dog through the autumnal dawn. All the while rehearsing my own arse kicking for tomorrow. Ungrateful little smurfs.