We started the day off with a 9am start at the Learning Centre. Azille wanted us to do a computer workshop for anyone that wants to sign up and learn bits about computers and how to use them. She's prepared a PowerPoint presentation for us to use, so all we'd be doing is going through it with the group.
Before we arrived, we thought that there were 2 people coming, as that's all we had confirmed as of Wednesday. When we got going though we had about 6 people, which was pretty decent considering we only had 9 available slots.
The presentation was split over 4 days, which we'd cover over the next 4/5 weeks. The first day, that we had to do today, was unbelievably basic. All it was, was going through the components of a PC, getting used to the mouse and typing. A couple of the students were still struggling, which felt crazy, because of the world of gadgets we live in. But if they've never used a computer before, how are they supposed to know? It was really interesting.
We ended the lesson at around 10:30, as we'd gone through the whole of day 1, and given them time to play around on the computers. We didn't have a session until 5, so Joe allowed us to go home for lunch.
I've been craving these little things called a Koeksister (possibly spelt wrong), which is like a spongey doughnut thing, covered in syrup, and topped with coconut shavings. It's heavenly. We headed down to this little shop by Joes that did these amazing ones, and got 4, Martin had 1, I had the rest. I even asked for the recipe, as I don't want to live in a world without these little beauts. The lady that I asked was a bit hesitant, but said that if I came back just before I left, she'd see what she could do. Happy days.
We then headed to Century City shopping centre to grab some lunch, a cheeky McDonald's, before heading home, where we chilled for a couple of hours.
We met Joe at the Learning Centre at 4:30, and headed to Van Der Poel where we had our only football coaching session of the day. These kids were buzzing. When we arrived they came up to us, giving us high fives and handshakes, asking about players and Arsenal and just generally excited to see us, which was really nice. We ended up having around 33 kids in the end. We only had a few balls and cones, so we decided to do the possession session, with Rondos, which we've had as our back up session, for when we have a little number of balls and many kids. These kids, although very excitable, were awful at it. They all wanted to get their head over the ball and dribble it. Even when we had one man in the middle trying to get it off them, they would hold onto the ball for ages, before trying to take it round the, as we've seen so many times while out here. After talking to one of the Van Der Poel coaches, he was saying that quite often the problem with clubs is that they don't have anywhere near enough equipment for the coaches to put on actual sessions, and often they only have a couple of balls for loads of kids. So improving on this significantly is going to be difficult without a big investment from the South African Football Association into grassroots football. Shame the money they made from the World Cup didn't go into that.
We ended on a crossover match, which had one match going on between the older lot on the full length pitch, with the younger kids playing another match across the senior match. It's an end that Martin and I are starting to do more and more when we had a big group of kids, as it gets them looking up when with the ball as to not collide with the other match that's going on.
After that was over, we had a quick chat with the coaches and headed off. I had booked a place on an FA Licenced Coaches Club Webinar, which took place at 7pm our time, so it was a bit of a rush to get home. Thankfully I made it, and got to see it all, which was really interesting.
Tomorrow we have another lazy day, only needing to go into the Learning Centre at 1:30, before our session with Drommedaris girls in the afternoon. So it should be a good day.
Harry
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