Bouncing Off The Walls

After a couple of false starts, training started tonight. We had restricted the numbers to the Dubai lads. Dec and Micheal were absent and I had invited a new lad from Cork called Eoghan. He is a buddy of Wolfies and is living in Antwerp until July. I thought it would be good to get him involved early before he gets distracted by the Flemish ladies and Belgian beer.

Priority tonight was to stretch the legs and get the hands on the ball. We got the ladders out and rattled through them for a while. Silky footwork was not the order of the day. Colin, a Dub whose finest moment was scoring the deciding goal in the Maastricht final, is most definitly NOT a candidate for Riverdance. In fairness though it takes a couple of nights to get back into them but they get the legs pounding and serve their purpose.

There was some error ridden football drills after that before we broke off into a game. Brian Dooher's team totally dominated the other team, which I was on! There is nothing worse than getting bait by Olof Gill and they made shit of us tonight. I don't think we strung three passes together.

Indoor isn't ideal for a game like Gaelic Football. Putting The Bull in an enclosed area is a recipe for disaster but we survived relatively unscathed. After a couple of months off you forget about the bruises, scrawls and biting involved in Gaelic Football. I have a few nice reminders of tonights session but ya gotta love it.

Our Banisteoir Conan made a rare appearance tonight and started what will hopefully turn into a DVD of the season. We will collect photage as we go and keep editing it away and hopefully at the end of the year have something which tells the story of 2009. Last year was unforgettable and hopefully this year will be the same. The roads you travel to play European GAA are a far cry from those in Ireland and the experience along the way are worth recording. It will be our 'A Year till Sunday'.

So Day 1 is down and the next outing will be a little 7's tournament we are organising on Saturday. Hopefully we might get a session in on Monday night and then we'll keep our heads down till Dubai. Its less than a week away now and the thought of the warm desert climate is certainly exciting.