Day 17 - North London Derby

Again, another day filled with so much hope, but returned so little.

After getting up and leaving the apartment, along with a fast asleep Martin, at around 7:30, I got to Joes house at around 8:15, anticipating them all to be ready to head off to Yonicks football match. Nope, all still in their pyjamas. Apparently there was a problem with Yonicks registration for the club so he couldn't play today. So the early wake up seemed a bit of a missed chance. Oh well, Joe and I took a walk down to the hardware store, where Joe picked up a few bits to do some odd jobs around the house with. He also bought me this thing that they call a 'CookSister'. Which is a bit like a doughnut, but instead of covering the dough in sugar, they cover it in coconut shreddings. Wow. It was amazing. It was crazy hot to hold but it was so warm and soft to eat, it was delicious. It started to make the early wake up less of a lost cause. After heading back to Joes, and him getting changed, Joe decided to take me down to his local church, where they were having band practice. It was nice to meet everyone, and see what it was like, but if I'm honest it wasn't really my cup of tea, sorry Joe.

After that, we back again to Joes, where I grabbed Yonick, and we drove back to our apartment to get Martin. We decided to walk to the Waterfront, as it was a nice day and was only an hours walk. Plus we couldn't be bothered to face South African public transport, which we have quickly grown to despise. After getting to the Waterfront, we stopped for a quick McDonalds lunch, before heading to Vodacom so I could get a sim for my phone, and finally onto a pub around the corner, which was showing the Arsenal-Tottenham game.

No words. We. Were. Woeful. From start to finish it was just terrible. We kept giving the ball back to them as soon as we won it. Every single player put in a terrible shift. It was disgusting to watch. Credit where it's due, though. As much as I hate to say it Tottenham really did deserve the win. It's the worst I've seen us play this season. Summed up my last 2 days, really.

After walking back to the apartment, and receiving many a taunt from Yonick (who's a Man Utd fan), we went back to Joes, where we picked up Jodi, and headed to the cinema to see the Kingsman.

What a film. Was definitely the highlight of my day, and I'd even go as far as to say it made up for the way Arsenal played earlier. It was brilliant. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone and everyone. Top film. What makes it even better was that tickets worked out to be around £2.50 each, which was a bargain! What an end to a woeful day.

We have our second day off tomorrow, and we're planning on heading down to Camps Bay beach to see if it's really as nice as everyone says it is. It'll be a chance for me to test myself against the sun, and try and continue my 16 day undefeated streak against sunburn. I'll tell you how it goes tomorrow.

Harry

Day 16 - Waterfront 5's 2.0

Day 16, and our second time down at the Waterfront 5's. A day full of so much hope, which didn't go to plan.

It started off well, Martin and I got up, had our room cleaned and went on our morning run. We're slowly managing to get further and further, as we did 2 laps of the park next to us which, in this heat, wasn't too bad. After showering and getting dressed, we headed down to the local shops to pick up some more juice, as we seem to be drinking down about 6 litres every few days.

We came home to have lunch, which was fish cakes, potatoes and salad. It didn't sound too great, and with the food we've been getting over the last week, our hopes weren't high at all. But thankfully, they were delicious.

After lunch we headed to the Communicare head office in town, to grab some posters for Joe, before dropping them off at the Learning Centre. We then made our way down to the Waterfront to prepare for our Waterfront 5's session.

We got there around half an hour early, so we had a quick kick around while waiting for the kids to show up. They eventually arrived, around 15 minutes late, which cut our session a bit shorter but we didn't mind.

After a quick introduction, we split the 7 five-a-side teams into a group of 3 teams and a group of 4. The group of 4 stayed on Martins pitch, and the group of 3 came over to mine.

As I started to get things underway I began realising a big problem. Not one of these kids speaks a word of English. I found it odd how they looked at me with such blank expressions, and realised it as I tried explaining what I wanted them to do. Eventually, after saying 'Pass', 'Move', 'Possession' and 'Keep Ball' a million times each, they started to get it. It was going well, we were playing a piggy in the middle game in their teams, and it was starting to run smoothly. Until one player (who was barefoot) got his foot stamped on by another (who was in metal studs). It was horrible to watch, because everyone who's played football for any club has been trod on at least once, and it hurts. But as I guided this kid to the side, I realised his toe was gushing with blood. He quickly hopped on my back, and I carried him over to by the little office building, blood dripping on the floor with every step I took. As I sat him down I turned to the adults and told them what had happened, expecting them to jump right into action. Oh no. That's not what happened. They handed me a dirty, old first aid kit and said "Do you know how to use this?"

Brilliant. I had to leave around 20 kids to themselves and hope they don't cause chaos while I patched up this kids toe. On went the rubber gloves, out came the antiseptic wipes and I started. After about 10 minutes of using the awful first aid kit they had, I was done, and the player had a beautiful bandaged up toe. I told him he couldn't play for the rest of the day, and had to keep his toe rested. Did that happen? Of course not. About 20 minutes later he was back involved, playing in matches, with a spare pair of trainers he must've got off someone. Had to give it to him, this kid had determination. After checking with the adults that were sat with him, I had little choice but to let him play.

Thankfully, half an hour and a ball to the Crown Jewels later, the session was over. I had one aim. Get in the car and get home. Which is exactly what we did, after picking up our Gatsby's from the office. They were beautiful, again.

Not in the mood for going out after a poor day, so Martin and I are settled downstairs, currently watching the Six Nations game between England and Wales, with our buddy George by our side.

Tomorrow hopefully watching Yonick play, then taking him down to the Waterfront to watch the North London Derby!! #COYG

Harry

Day 15 - Maja Crèche & JG High School

Today we had a full day of coaching, going from coaching kids at ages 5/6, straight to a football club of lads that would be in the year below me.

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

Photos From Day 14 - Noon Gun With George

Photos From Day 9 - Waterfront 5's

Photos From Night Out Sightseeing with George

Photos From Day 6 - Ruyterwacht Action Soccer Club