Benelux Championship Round 2 - Den Hague

The bandwagon heads 180km north-east to The Hague this weekend for Round 2 of the Benelux Championship. After a disaster of a first outing where we used every excuse imaginable to defend our poor performance, we’ll be hoping for a better showing this weekend. It looks as if the injuries have cleared up but the European elections has robbed us of Kevin Keary. Cyclist Philip Roche has fallen off the bike a little and has opted to spend the weekend just down the road in Amsterdam.....with his girlfriend.

We’ll have debutants in the form of the two Ciaran’s and Eoghan. In addition, we are in a position to field a second team which is a great boost for the club. It was one of our objectives at the beginning of the year to try and increase numbers at training and it was imperative to have a second team to give everyone some meaningful game time. With 20+ attending training nearly every night, it is not just a token effort. The Benelux league will challenge the B’s but when we break off into the Pan-E Shield and Championship, I’d expect them to be competitive.

Our build up proper started last Saturday when we played a sixty minute training match. Its great to be able to get the numbers to do this and gives us a good opportunity to stretch the legs with a bit more purpose than ordinary drills. We had a couple of guest players too which were more than welcome. Gearoid Sayers sped up from his Saturday morning flight into Charleroi to tog out and John Sheanon, fresh from the All-Ireland U-21 semi defeat to Cork, lined out at midfield against his older brother.

Having picked two balanced teams, the game was tight. Those to shine were Johnny Phelan, who is showing rapid improvement and Cluxton put in a storming last ten, scoring 2-1, after being released from goal. The game was error ridden and we continue to show disregard for having any sort of structure in our play. However, one of the things alot of lads lack is match experience and as a result they’re nervous on the ball. In that sense, the more of these types of games we have the more lads will improve. So patience is the word of the day for now.

We trained again on Monday and finished up with a ball work filled session ce soir. We had over twenty tonight and the girls had even more on their half. You get a great sense of satisfaction when the pitch is heaving with activity and all the joggers and passers by are stopped looking in at the funny posts and lads roaring at eachother.

After Amsterdam, The Hague posted a provocative article on hoganstand.com in which they declared themselves to be hot favourites for their home tournament this weekend. Indeed, it will be a tall order to defeat them but that will be what we will set out to do. If we can move the ball quickly and support the man in possession we’ll be in with a good shout.

When we played Clare Island in our invitational tournament earlier in the year, the final was particularly enjoyable. It was not just that we thought Olof a footballing lesson, it was that we played as described above. Our objective this weekend is to enjoy our football and if we achieve that we will have played the way we set out to play and should have something to show at the end of it.

Football Officer Colin and Bainisteoir Conan have done an excellent job with the arrangements so we should be all set. They’re greater involvement this year has meant less work has fallen on my shoulders and we’ve been able to improve communication and organisation. So all that stands between us and the tournament is the public holiday in Belgium tomorrow. I may have to take a little tour around the local bars tomorrow evening to make sure no-one falls off the wagon!