First Girls' Game

The early morning wake ups continued as I went to the HKFC to coach the U-12/U-14 Girls' team once again. The session was good but one thing I need to do is make sure they are always concentrating. I must make sure that they don't fool around or talk to each and make sure they focus and work their hardest during training. But, for some of them I didn't want to push them too hard since we had a game later on in the day.

At around 3:30pm, there was a game between the U-14 HKFC Girls' team and the U-14 Canadian International School Girls' team. I obviously went as a coach and tried to help them out by giving advice before and at half-time of the game as well as shouting a lot during the game. The team worked very hard and played brilliantly winning 4-2. Of course, it's a development league and the main aim is to develop the players rather than winning games, but it was a great feeling winning my first game as a coach nonetheless. Not only was it the first game I was involved in as a coach, it was also the first game in the U-14 HKFC Girls' history!

5:00 AM

I was worried about being tired later on today after waking up early at 5:00 am for a charity walk. But I ended up doing fine today since I slept quite well last night. Before my training, I started with the coaching as normal once again and then went on to start the session. At first, I wasn't quite warmed up since I just came from the coaching and therefore felt a little nervous doing the passing and overlapping drills. At first, I might not have done well, but later on in the game involving two four goals on four different sides and you have to defend two of them and score in either of the other two, I did much better. I played some good passes and my awareness wasn't too bad. Later on, we finished with a game and although I had a few good moments, I didn't receive the ball as much as I wanted to.

Athletics Day

Today was athletics day for school for the Year 12 and 13. Although it was nice to see my 100m time (14.00 seconds), 400 m time (1:11 minutes), and high jump result (1.20 m), (yes, all those results are quite woeful) it was a shame not to have been able to do the 1500m run. The 1500m run is my best event and I was getting ready for it but we couldn't do it due to running out of time. I will be doing it on the finals day where there's the whole school competing so at least that's quite good.

I've got to sleep soon now because I have to wake up at 5:00 am for a charity walk. It is going to be absolutely horrible tomorrow since I'll be tired in school and for football.

Training and mini game

School training actually went off to a bad start because we actually didn't have a bus to get us there. So we had to all take taxis as well as missing quite a chunk of the training. The training ended up being a game with only three touches and at least it was quite fun.

Before going off to the HKFC, we actually played a friendly game with this other school. I thought it would be quite fun so I played but left midway through since it wasn't serious and I needed to save energy for the HKFC training.

Then, the HKFC training was mostly small sided games which I did pretty well on picking out players to pass and even scored a first time left foot shot.

Morning skill work

Did some skill work for football this morning, going down to the park rather than the beach. I did some different juggling, passing, controlling and passing the ball at an angle drills and I actually did better than I expected to do.

South Island School 0-1 Ying Wa, HKFC 5-0 Happy Valley

I had a bad start to a tiring day by first losing to Ying Wa 1-0 for school but then later getting better by beating Happy Valley 5-0 with the HKFC.

It was a real shame to have lost to Ying Wa, the team that beat us 6-0 last time, because we worked hard and gave them a tough game. As a centre-back, I played solidly making lots of heading clearances and overall being strong in defence. It was a very close game until they scored late from a scramble. You could tell that we played well since they started to waste time and play more defensively after their goal. Although we played well, it was particularly disappointing not have won a game which could have easily gone either way after having previous poor meetings with them.

After the game and the girls' coaching at the HKFC, there was my 2nd game of the day against a strong opponent, Happy Valley, who were undefeated before the game. Despite a disappointing first half, ending 0-0, we played some magnificent passing and moving football in the 2nd half and scored five goals. I came on as a substitute as a right-back for about thirty minutes and I gave a good cameo. It was in fact quite similar to the school game in that I made lots of vital headers and also tackled the ball away from the winger aggressively. Not once, did they trouble from my side.

On top of all the games I've played, I did some coaching yesterday and today. So far, it's been going very well and I'm starting to take more of an initiative and leading more.

Two games tomorrow

I have two competitive games tomorrow. One against Ying Wa for school at 2:30pm and another against Happy Valley for my club at 8:30pm. On top of this, I've got to do the coaching in between the two games. It will therefore be a very tiring day tomorrow and I therefore want to get as much sleep as possible tonight.