If there is strength in numbers....

....then Belgium may bring the whole of Germany to its knees this weekend. Over 50 Belgium GAA players will fly to the Bavarian capital tomorrow to go to battle in Round 1 of the European Football Championship. 26 lads and around the same amount of girls will travel. It is a great indication of the rapid growth of our club. We will be the only mens team to enter a team in both the Shield and the Championship sections whilst only Holland can match our Ladies in entering two teams in the Ladies competition.

Having sat in the stand wishing I was playing last Friday night, I'll get my outing this weekend. Its been a disasterous couple of months with injury and a continued dose of antibiotics but hopefully that can be put aside for the weekend and the body will hold up to a bit of action.

Our A team go about defending the Championship from a lowly position. Benelux was a write off as we failed to get to any of the four finals. Still, we travel with our strongest team to date all be it with a few injury concerns and fitness issues. Our opponents provide little novelty as we square up against Lux and The Hague who we know all too well. While Paris are not in our Regional section we know them well from last year.

Its very disappointing that teams like Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Munich won't step out of the Shield and take on the Championship. This has a knock on effect on our B's who will have their work cut out. They are in a group with Liffre, Frankfurt and Copenhagen which gives them a reasonable chance to qualify for the semi. They've been fairly diligent about their training this year and have had to box above their weight in the Benelux rounds. Hopefully they will see the fruits of their labour this weekend.

Our girls won 2 of the first 3 rounds to leave them well placed going into round 4. They have a few new additions but will be without the influential Anay who injured her knee in Luxembourg. They too have a B team but as the Ladies is not split into Shield and Championship they must compete against much more experienced teams.

Having felt I have failed to light the fuse in fellas so far this year I was at a bit of a loss of what to say to them tonight. So I just told them what I tell myself and what I alluded to in previous blogs. Three things. The first, play the game with your head up, know your next move before you gather possession. The second, beat your man. You have every right to win every single ball if you want. And the third, the most difficult, and the one we each need to think about most between now and Saturday. Hunger. Hard to define, hard to recognise it if you have it and hard to find it if you've lost it. For Saturday, it comes down to what fellas want and what actions they will take to get it. The actions portray the hunger. If the players get it back, then Germany may well fall.