After a wake up call from Martin, with him knocking on my door to make sure I was up, we had toast, I showered, then we set off to go to the Learning Centre to get prepared for our morning session with the 2nd crèche we'll have encountered, called Maja Crèche. Yesterday, while we were following Joe to Drommedaris, we stopped off at Maja Crèche to introduce ourselves to the principal there (who was a massive Arsenal fan, and plastered photos of Luke and Jeff all over her yearly review newsletter), and make sure the session was still on.
As the kids started to enter at around 9:20, you could see on their faces how excited they were, it was adorable. They all seemed starstruck by the fact we were there.
Martin and I decided to do the same session as we'd done for Goodwood crèche, as it worked really well, and it was the same age group. So we started off with the traffic lights, which they loved. We then moved on to the relay type races, starting without the ball, then holding the ball, then kicking the ball. At first they didn't seem to quite get to grips with it, but after getting the teacher, and one of the parents involved in the demonstration, they did it really well. We ended up doing that for the rest of the session, it went on for so long. Martin and I always end a crèche session with the kids walking past us in a line, giving us high fives, and usually the kids start doing run ups to give you the hardest high fives, and your hand is left stinging by the end of it, thankfully this crèche wasn't that into making our hands fall off. After all the high fives were given, one of the parents asked for a selfie with us, which I found funny because even the adults love the fact we're over here, representing Arsenal, which gives you a really nice feeling that something so simple can make people so happy.
After Maja crèche left, we had around 3 hours to kill before we headed off to Yonicks school to coach the after school football club, so we just chilled out on the computers. Joe asked us to make a poster for the official opening of the Ruyterwacht Circle, which is being commemorated by a tournament run by Communicare on that day. Martin got straight into it, so I let him be and started playing various games on the Internet to kill time. We had a quick break at 1ish though for a hot dog lunch, followed by a dessert of Joes birthday cake from Saturday, which was absolutely incredible. We had around 6 small pieces to share between us, and I'm so thankful Martin wasn't up for eating more than one as I managed to easily demolish the 5 remaining pieces.
After following Joe to JG High School (Yonick and Jodi's school), we whacked on our boots, which are both gleaming white from their lack of use so far, and got ready to take the session. We ended up having around 20 kids which was decent to work with. Jodi came by with Joes camera and was the photographer of our session which was cool. She told me that most of the guys were turning 18 this year, meaning that if we were at school together, they'd only be in the year below me, which was a weird thought as I was coaching them.
We split the group into 4 teams, and gave each team a ball to start with and got them just passing and moving themselves around a grid. We eventually took out 2 balls to turn it into 2 5-a-side possession games, both playing in one area. After each team had played each other, we moved on to and endzone game, where 2 teams occupied either endzone, and 2 teams were in the middle. The middle teams were playing against each other, to try and pass the ball successfully to their endzone. If a pass is successful, the losing team would switch with that endzone. The guys seemed to love playing this so we allowed it to go on for a while, before bringing it into one big match to finish off.
As we had no bibs, the original idea of just organising the teams, and making them think about who's on their team or not, was a bit messy, but we couldn't do anything about it as there was no bibs to clearly identify each team. Then one of the guys popped up and said about shirts v skins. We didn't argue against it, and in no time at all one of the teams was taking their tops off. I had to make sure Jodi didn't get too over excited about the amount of topless men she was watching, but she insisted she was fine, saying that she'd taken enough photos of them!
After we ended the match, Joe wanted us to have a group photo so Martin and I got stuck in with them and had a massive team photo. Hopefully soon I'll be able to get the pictures off Jodi to show you.
Afterwards, as Jodi and Jaden got picked up by Joe, we waited for Yonick as we were given the task of taking him to football training. It was a nightmare. It took us about an hour and a half to get to where Yonick was playing, then into town so we knew where to go to get home, then back to Yonicks training ground. The trip should've taken us no more than 30 minutes. We ended up being stuck in the car for 2 hours before getting home. Meaning we are currently exhausted after being stuck in a car with no air conditioning whatsoever, and no water, as Jaden downed the lot back at JG!
We have a lie in tomorrow though, which will be nice, as we only have Waterfront 5's to coach in the afternoon. Hoping to go for a longer run tomorrow morning to try and get those fitness levels up!
Harry
No comments:
Post a Comment
If you have any comments/feedback, leave it here! You can do it anonymously if you want to, but we'd prefer to know who's commenting so we can get back to you!