Day 38 - Communicare Action Soccer League

Finally! The Communicare Action Soccer League takes place. About time too!

For those that don't know, the Communicare Action Soccer League (CASL) is an annual 5-a-side tournament, run by Communicare, based at the Italian Club's Futsal pitches. The tournament is split into Juniors and Seniors. There are 4 Junior teams, and 6 Senior teams. The teams play eachother once, and the team that has the most points at the end, wins the league.

After Joe called us at 10, telling us to meet him at Italian Club at 11, we quickly got up, ready and left. We were a tiny bit late, but no sign of Joe so we were okay.

Waited for about 20 minutes. Still no sign of Joe. We ended up messaging Jodi, who told us that they were waiting for us at Joes house. Brill. We drove off, and got there as quick as we could. As one of the adults who was meant to transport the Ruyterwacht girls team cancelled, we had to completely fill the car with 3 of the girls, plus Jaden, and drive them to the pitches, where they were playing their first game against the Drommedaris girls we coached yesterday. We both expected the Ruyterwacht girls to walk it, but the Drommedaris lot actually played really well, and even managed to equalise, making it 1-1 the result. Must have been our quality coaching yesterday!

The 2nd game to play was a friendly between last years senior winners Woodstock, and this years favourites Ruyterwacht. As they were a bit short on numbers, and had a game to play straight after, both Martin and I got a chance to play for Ruyterwacht, in what was our first proper game of football since flying out here.

Well, I'm glad they brought me on because I bagged a cheeky hat trick, and Ruyterwacht won the game 6-4! I'll take full credit for that! Haha.

Ruyterwacht then had to play in their first competitive game, against the coaches team, Coaches United. It was an action packed game that eventually ended 7-6 to Ruyterwacht, after they were behind the whole game.

We didn't stay for much longer, because we needed to drop some of the Ruyterwacht girls team back home, so ended up leaving at around 3. Got home at just before 4, got changed and headed down to Mixas to see what game was on (it was Man Utd-Sunderland, poor game in my opinion!) and watch that with a few drinks.

After that was over we headed home to chill out in the lounge watching movies on the TV and just relaxing in general. Tomorrow there are a few big games on so we plan on watching those, before heading down to GrandWest to see the almighty Jason Mraz perform! Happy days!

Harry

Day 37 - Drommedaris Girls

For some reason this morning I got up and about really early, making my morning tea at around 8, even though I didn't have to be up until 9. I'm starting to feel the effects of not sleeping long now, writing this post, though.

Today was a fairly chilled day. Joe wanted us in at the Learning Centre at 10, just to be around for anyone that needed help on the computers or anything.

As we got there, Azille asked to see us, and she, aswell as Joe, was keen on us running a basic computer workshop, teaching whoever wants to learn, how to use a computer and set up an email address. She handed us a list of applications, and our job for th day was to ring them up and see if they were still interested, and if so, to come down on the 12th March - our first workshop. Martin decided to give me responsibilities of calling the applicants, while he got busy putting the photos of Joes camera onto their OneDrive account, and then on to Facebook. After sending a few emails, and after a tasty fish and chip lunch, I got underway.

No luck. There was about 7 applicants. 5 didn't answer their phones, one was asleep, and the final one was the only one that actually confirmed to coming down on the 12th. Success.

As the Learning Centre closed up at around 4, Martin and I headed straight for Atlantic Football Club, where we had our afternoon session with the Drommedaris girls team, ahead of their first match of the Communicare Action Soccer League tomorrow.

Very rarely have I seen a proper improvement in a players skills from the start of the session to the end. With the girls, at the end of our session, both Martin and I could see a drastic improvement in their shooting and dribbling, which is what we focused on. We must be super coaches. Sign us up Mr. Venga sir!

In all seriousness the girls were a delight to coach, just like last time. Although their ability isn't as good as some of the kids we've coached, they've been our favourite to coach, as they take everything on bored, and we end up having a lot of fun playing in matches with them.

We started off with them all having a ball each, and dribbling in a square. With just 5 girls we had enough balls for one each which was a nice, fresh, option to have.

After getting them to use different parts of their feet, we got down to the main activity. One at a time they had to come out, beat Martin the defender, then shoot at me, the goalkeeper. They did really well, and some of the girls had some serious power in their shots. The first shot that came to me, managed to smack me straight in the bum, and it stung for a long time after. Was a nightmare. But the accuracy was a little off. So we made it easier, and had Martin lay it off to the girls to have a shot at me. Much better. More shots on target and more goals.

We eneded our session with a match, Martin taking one team, I took another. Martin had the girl who was by far the best player on the team, called Thakira. She was amazing. We ended up losing 4-2 to them, meaning in mine and Martins little tally, he's 3-1 up. Damn. I'll get it back soon, don't worry folks!

After the session was over, we headed home to eat the inedible food that Berghof had left us, before heading over to Joes to celebrate Yonicks 18th! Happy birthday fella!!

Early start tomorrow, so will end the blog here. We have the start of the Communicare Action Soccer League, which I'll explain in more detail tomorrow night.

Harry

Day 36 - De Beers Football Club

De Beers Football Club. No, it's not a pub team, or a mock name. It's an actual Amateur Football Club in South Africa, and was the location of our only session that was scheduled for us for this morning.

As this was an afternoon session, it meant Martin and I had a nice lie in, getting up at around 11, before going for our run. I worked out last night that one lap of the park we run around is about 1km, and we managed 5 laps today in just under 25 minutes, which is really good, considering after our first week out here, we were struggling with just one lap in the heat. Seems like we're more used to the heat now.

After getting ourselves ready, we headed to the Learning Centre to meet Joe at around 1:30ish. Turns out we didn't have to leave the Learning Centre until around 3:30ish, so we had plenty of time to chill out and relax before leaving.

After around 45 minutes of travelling, and a quick stop for Joe to pick up a new hat, we met up with Fiona, who organised our visit, and followed her into the ground. It was a gorgeous ground, with an amazing view of Table Mountain overlooking it. When wifi decides to work on my laptop I'll upload photos of it, but it was amazing.

We had a quick chat with one of the head coaches, and were told we'd be coaching the under 10's, 9's and 8's mixed, as it was their second session of the season, so not many turned up. We split the group into 2, Martin took the younger lot, I took the older lot. Well, I say I took them. I WISH I took them. The coach of the Under 10's, who I was meant to coach, pretty much took control and started his session, which was pretty much completely fitness and conditioning based, which i felt was wrong considering they're just 10 years old. The plan was for him to do his warm up that he always does, and then I'd take over for the hour. Once he'd finished doing his thing I had about 20 minutes to do my bit. Which I was a bit annoyed about but had to live with it, so I did a circle passing exercise, similar to one we did at Waterfront, but a bit adjusted so that there's 2 players in the middle, playing one-twos with the outside players of a circle, going round to each player before swapping when he's passed to every player. It worked quite well, just i had to rush it a bit as obviously I didn't get much time. Martin on the other hand was having a good, hour long session with his younger lot, with the coach happily watching on, taking notes.

First Densel at the Ruterwacht Circle opening, now this Antonio guy here. I seem to be cursed when partnered up wit coaches. Oh well, have to just go with the flow I guess.

After what felt to me like a wasted day, we headed home. As we were driving, we noticed that there were loads and loads of kids playing football on small patches of grass next to the motorway. Joe explained to us that the township kids used this area to have a kick around, and to train too. Which was crazy to see because there was literally hundreds of kids playing different games down a long stretch of grass. Makes me grateful for having decent parks and pitches back home in England. Imagine playing barefoot next to a motorway? Crazy.

Got home quite late, at around 8 (hey, that rhymes), and just chilled out in front of the TV, Spurs and Liverpool both crashed out of the Europa League. Bad week for English teams in Europe all round then I guess.

Tomorrow we have our session with the Drommedaris girls team, ahead of the Communicare Action Soccer League, that starts on Saturday, which they're taking part in. Last week Luke and Jeff took a team each and coached them throughout their time here. Hopefully Martin and I have the same. He's beating me 2-1 on matches, so I need to pull it back somehow. Easy stuff though, I'm practically a ginger Guardiola, or a young David Moyes.......

Harry

Day 35 - Ysterplaat Crèche (1&2) & Goodwood College

Day 35, and we're 5 weeks into our trip in Cape Town, and starting to near that halfway point, which is just a week away.

After 4 days with barely any coaching, we were happy to be getting back into it today, with what we thought would be 2 crèche classes, and a decent after school session.

We were due to meet Joe at the Brooklyn Communicare Office at 8:45, so he could take us to Ysterplaat crèche for 9. But he was running a bit late so Martin had to nip inside the office and ask for directions to the crèche. Thankfully it was only round the corner, so easy to get too.

After introducing ourselves to the teachers and the 2 classes, we took the first class outside to start our session. Now, we thought that the younger age group from Goodwood were a bt slow, and weren't able to understand us. Ysterplaat was pretty much the same. It must be something about that age, although the year aboves were absolutely fine. Odd.

Anyway, we started off with our traffic light game, where Red cone = Run, Blue = Walk and whistle meant stop. They managed to get the hang of it with a fair bit of encouragement, but they seemed to have lots of fun which was nice to see, and was the reason we were out here, to get the kids to have fun.

We then went into a relay style game. Big mistake. After explaining, and demonstrating, and emphasising plenty of times that only the person holding the cone could run, as soon as Martin blew his whistle to say go, half the class started charging down for that cone! We decided that we'd hold the hand of the 2nd person in each line, so they physically couldn't go, which surprisingly worked really well.

We then ended with out classic rolling the ball in a circle game, which the kids loved, like all the kids out here, which was good. We then had a photo with them, and took them inside.

Out came the second class, who were the same age as the first one. We decided to simplify the traffic lights game, by only using the whistle. Martin would tell the kids what movement to do, like run/walk, and the whistle meant they'd have to stop.

While he was doing that, I was walking round with the kids, and noticed a load of shattered glass on the floor in the corner of our area. As half of these kids were barefoot, and it was in the area we were using, I needed to clean it up. Thankfully, while I was brushing the glass away, Martin managed to drag out the first game, until I was done. Which was good.

We decided to skip the relay races, as there wasn't much time left, so went straight into the ball rolling game which, again, they loved. They were a lot better at not reaching out and grabbing the ball off eachother than Goodwood too, which made our job easier. After that, it was photo time, then a goodbye.

While chilling in the staffroom, Joe said that we had to go in a minute to our final crèche session. What? We'd already done Ysterplaat 1&2, like we were scheduled to do.

Turns out, there were 2 Ysterplaat crèche's, the other just round the corner from us, so we weren't done with the crèche's for the day just yet. That's alright, we thought, keeps us busy. So off we headed to our final crèche session.

This class. Were a dream. They were nice, funny, enthusiastic, well behaved, understood everything we asked them to do. It was quality. I had a lot of fun at that crèche. We even got them singing! We would sing a tune and they'd echo it back to us. It was quality. We decided to do the running to the cone game. Where they would be moving around the middle, then when Martin blew his whistle, they would have to run to a cone as fast as they could. They loved it. That's where we slotted in our singing session, too. Even when we were sitting down, Martin would be pulling faces behind my back, and we did this Pantomime-esque thing with them where I would look around, and he wouldn't be there, and the kids would be shouting and pointing at him. My days it was brilliant. We both loved it. Sadly, after the relay races time was up. So again, we took a photo with them, and said our goodbyes. What a class.

Then came Goodwood College. Now we had no idea what sort of numbers to expect, as Joe wasn't too sure himself. He mentioned 60 kids, which took us back a bit, but you never know what to expect.

Turned up, about 60/70 boys and girls were there, all wanting to be coached. With 5 balls. Ugh.

Now, the school lessons finished at around 1:30, the time we started, and we were scheduled to finish at 2:30, the time their school actually ended. As it turns out, Densel, the coach from Saturday, was running an after school programme with this school, and we were just there to pretty much get attention for it. What they actually wanted us to do, was basically supervise the lads playing football, until 2:30, which is the time they were allowed to go home. Fair enough. We divided the teams, and ended up with about 4 teams of 12. 12 a side on 2 pitches? Bit iffy but okay. Oh no, not that easy. They were maintaining one half of one pitch, so that was rendered unusable. Then Densel took the girls and coached on one half of the other pitch, rendering that unusable, so we had two 12v12 games, on one half of each pitch. To say it was a bit hectic was an understatement. Oh well, 2:30 came and we headed home for the day.

Before we left, Joe mentioned something about the need of someone creating a professional football team, to compete in Cape Town with Ajax, which would be a crazy cool project to work on, in my opinion, if the financial support was there. Got me interested and thinking. Sadly I'm just a student volunteering, so any chance of me starting up my own football team in Cape Town will have to wait. Sorry folks.

Home. Haircut. Arsenal game. Now, I would've posted yesterday, as I was planning to do it after the game. But I was so angry with the performance I was in no mood to post. My bad. Sorry. But it was a shambles. We let in 3 goals to a team who had only scored 4 in 6 games during the group stage. We now have to score 3 away to a team who have conceded 2 goals in their whole Champions League 2014/15 campaign. Shambles. I won't dwell too much on it though. Martin heard the most of my anger last night, so he may or may not share it on his blog haha.

Harry

Day 34 - Cape Town City Stadium & Edgemead FC

Today we had planned to have an early start, and do our first session with Riverton crèche, but after the dramas from yesterday, we had a nice morning off, which was decent.

After waking up at around 11, we went for a run, managing 4 laps in almost midday heat, before running to Checkers to pick up some more juice. As we knew we didn't have to meet Joe at the Learning Centre until 5, we decided to do something touristy during the day, and take a tour around the Cape Town City Stadium, which was purposefully built by FIFA for the World Cup, in 2010. 

As we had to go straight to a session after the tour, we had to go in our Arsenal gear, which we felt a bit uncomfortable with, because no one knew the reason for the kits, so we just looked super keen for Arsenal.

However, all uncomfortable was gone, when our tour guide brought it up in the lifts, and seemed to be amazed when we told her the reason, before using us as an example to the rest of the group as people that would purchase the box seats that we were checking out at the time.

Overall, the stadium is really nice and modern, but because it's owned by the City, no not a club itself, the lack of advertising and colour makes it look a bit boring. Plus they reduced the capacity from 68,000 to 55,000 by taking out 2 big chunks of upper tier seats, which made it look a bit odd.

Martin and I also decided that we need to book up tickets to see the last game of the season at the stadium, in the VIP seats, as they cost just over a tenner. Which is a decent price to watch a game in VIP section.

After the tour was over, we headed to the Learning Centre where we were a bit early, as the tour finished earlier than we expected. So we chilled there for a bit while waiting for Joe to take us to Edgemead Football Club, which is the biggest community soccer club in Cape Town, where our coaching session had been replaced with a big Q&A with the coaches from the club, who apparently were very keen to talk football and coaching with us, which we were more than happy to get involved in.

When we got there, we were directed into the clubhouse, into a smallish room to the left, where they had set a table up, with chairs behind for us to sit, with a load of chairs facing it, in proper press conference style, which was a bit daunting but we were excited for it.

We introduced ourselves, and explained what we were doing with Arsenal and why we were out here in Cape Town. Then the questions came firing in. But these weren't questions we were expecting, like about the players, staff and training ground. Oh no. These questions were about the coaching badges, how to encourage children to stay involved in Football, and how coaches in South Africa can get qualifications like our FA coaching levels. Some of the questions left me completely stumped, but luckily Martin used his tour guide experience to answer those ones, which was decent.

After that, food was brought in, and the Q&A ended, so everyone could socialise. We had all kinds of people coming up to us asking how we were, talking Football and opinions, and even trying to teach us some Afrikaans. Before we left, they mentioned how they wanted a day later on in our schedule to use as a coaching development-like day, where we would spend the morning coaching the kids, stopping for lunch, and then spending the afternoon showing different exercises and games to the coaches, so they could use it when coaching their teams, which sounded good to me.

Before too long it was time for us to go, as we had to somehow work out our way home after Joe had to leave early. We made it though, thanks to my amazing navigational skills.

Got home and watched the Barca-City game, where Barca deservedly won 2-1. Pundits on South African sports channels are awful though, as they were saying that if Messi scored the rebound from the penalty, it shouldn't have counted, as the clock showed it was after 94 minutes. Which is completely ridiculous because the referee decides when to end the game, and the added time is only the minimum amount that will be added. These pundits are even worse than Alan Shearer, Adrian Chiles and Robbie Savage, and they're terrible,

Harry

Day 33 - Sea Point

Today was the second day of our lazy weekend, and the start of our 5th full week in Cape Town.

After a lazy morning, staying in until late, and having room cleaned, the plan was to head to Camps Bay beach again to actually try and get a respectable tan, before coming back and chilling out, watching movies on the TV. However, about half an hour before we were about to leave, we got a call from one of the ladies at the Learning Centre, called Lina, saying we had to come into the Learning Centre ASAP, so Lourens can show us how to get to Riverton crèche for tomorrow morning. As it was to do with our schools and the kids, we left as soon as we could, and decided to go to Camps Bay after.

So off we set. However, about 20 minutes later, as we were nearing Ruyterwacht, we got another call, again from Lina, telling us that Lourens says not to worry about coming in, because Riverton crèche cancelled our session for tomorrow. We were gutted, we could've been tanning ourselves up on the beach! Ahh well. Luckily Century City, and Canal Walk shopping centre was the next turn off, so we decided to pop in their, grab a milkshake and some lunch, before heading to Camps Bay.

We both had a Melkert Milkshake, which we have no idea what it was, but it tasted incredible, and was topped with crushed gingerbread biscuits, and for lunch, I had a chip Gatsby, while Martin opted for a chip roll.

We then went to Checkers, and bought tickets to see Jason Mraz! Who is playing at Grandwest Casino next Sunday. Tickets worked out to be about £20 too, so happy days!

After that we were going to head for Camps Bay, but neither of us were in the mood to deal with the hassle that sand brings, so we stopped off at Sea Point instead, which is just along the road from the Green Point lighthouse where we met the rest of the Communicare team for our outing on Thursday.

At Sea Point they had this big grass area, where we decided to chill instead, and relax after a frustrating day. The weather was really nice so it was cool to just lay there and relax for a bit, although my back is looking a bit red now!!

We only have Edgemead Football Club tomorrow at 6, so Martin and I are hoping to check out the Cape Town Stadium tomorrow, before heading off to coach. Should be good.

Harry

Day 32 - Mixas

For those that don't know, Mixas is a pub just down the road from us. Now, the fact that a pub is a title of my blog for today shows you how much of a lazy day we had, so I'm afraid today's blog won't be as exceptionally awesome as it has been.

I had a bit of a traumatic start to the day though. Woke up at around 9:30, and my eye was stinging like mad! It felt like there was a big bit of sand in there. After spending a good 15 minutes, rubbing my eye, blinking, and washing my eye with water, the pain was still there, more than ever. So I went to see the nurse. Took me a while but I found her eventually. She told me to go down to the local chemist, by Checkers supermarket, to pick up some eye drops. I was grateful for the advice, but I was a bit miffed I had to drive myself down to the shop to get the eye drops, with one eye stinging every time I opened it! Luckily nothing serious happened, the Tazz is hard enough to drive with 2 eyes on everything, let alone 1!

Got back, put the drops in, but it took a good few hours before the pain started to go. What a disaster of a morning!

There were 3 Premier League games on today, Spurs-West Ham, Everton-Leicester and Southampton-Liverpool. As Martin and I fancied a lazy day, we decided to spend the day chilling out and watching the games, with a trip to Mixas pub for dinner. Luckily, they show the football on TV, so we can watch the games while eating. Decent!

We stayed at Berghof to watch the Spurs game, which I was annoyed at Alex Song, for pretty much handing Spurs a point, by unnecessarily taking Harry Kane down, with 10 seconds left! Unbelievable.

After the Spurs game finished we made our move for Mixas, where we watched the other 2 games while eating. I enjoyed another ribs meal, while Martin had a steak burger. The whole thing was so cheap it was brilliant! We paid, and headed back to Berghof for the evening.

Like I said there's not much to comment on for today as it was a quiet, lazy day. But we're heading down to Camps Bay beach, and Clifton Beach tomorrow, so hopefully more to talk about then!

Harry