The lucky streak of beautiful sunny weather ended today as it frizzled while we were training. In the morning, we were joined with four U-16 players (who are actually on the U-18 team). We played some keeping possession games, then the exercises we did before where you have to go in a square of mannequins and where you have to dribble past three mannequins, and finally some one-on-one. The training was quite tiring but it was important to move around to not get cold from the weather.
Soon after lunch, we went to watch the U-18 team play against Nike Academy, a team consisting of talented players who couldn't sign a contract with a team. The Blackburn team won the game 3-1. The game was a fierce one with strong contact, sliding tackles, and loud rants at the referee. It really showed what an English game is like.
We had an afternoon session as well and we started it with some more football tennis. Except this time, there were goals in the back where you can score in. The game was quite fun and I should think about doing some more of it back in Hong Kong. After that, we sort of did this obstacle course. It was basically a mixture of drills that needed to be completed with high intensity. The exercise was brilliant because it worked on all sorts of skills, passing, dribbling and shooting, as well as your fitness. It's quite complicated explaining the exercise without a picture of it so I will give a brief description in steps.
1. Dribble the ball to cones from side-to-side going in a zigzag motion.
2. When you reach the end of the cones, shoot at a large goal from about five metres. The ball must hit the net and not the ground.
3. Collect the ball back and pass it against a rebound board from right to left with a mannequin in front of you making you have to hit the ball against the board on an angle. Pass it 10 times with your right and 10 times with your left.
4. Take the ball and slalom past three cones and three mannequins.
5. Leave the ball and sprint back to where you started the dribbling from and this time run from side to side through the cones and mannequins.
6. Get the ball and run back to where you started the dribbling and repeat it again.
7. Leave the ball and move on to a station where there is a small goal with three cones situated behind it. One about five metres, another about ten metres and finally one about fifteen metres. Each cone should have two balls each. Run to the first cone, the closest one to the goal, and shoot the ball into the net. Move to the second one which is slightly behind you and then to the third one. Repeat this again to score with the second balls.
8. Finally, sprint back to where you started.
After all of this, I didn't particularly feel thirsty but I had a huge crave for oxygen as I panted for quite a while.
This weekend, there are no football games from the first team because it is international weekend and none for the U-18 team as well. Therefore after the game which started at 12:00, they were allowed to leave and go home. This meant, there won't be any food for supper at the academy. That wasn't a problem though as we had a nice dinner at the hotel we were staying at. I had a cumberland sausage as a meal and finished off with an upside down lemon cheesecake.
Starting at 5:00 pm, the U-6 to U-9 football teams had training. The coach told us that we could there to not play but to watch the coaching style and so on. If the players were better than us at football, then that would have been really embarrassing. We unfortunately couldn't watch them though since the dinner was quite long. So we went to watch the next teams training which was the ladies' first and reserve team. To be honest, it's hard for me to say, but they are really good as well.
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