School Nearly Out

The mood was good driving out of the BSB last night. We had nearly 30 lads and a good lively hours football. It felt like a weight was lifted off the shoulders too. No more planning sessions, battling traffic, listening to Timmy’s stories of failed conquests on the way training and no more need to rant and rave for a while. You’d be dying for the break but also when you’ve been at it this long you know the novelty will be well worn off within a week or two.

It was a relatively quiet week on the organisation side. I even emailed Colin today to see was there anything going down. He said it was worryingly quiet and it still is at 19h45 the night before our last tournament. We have something like 47 lads travelling tomorrow so it is a huge operation.

Those numbers bring a lot of stress around team selection too. You’d have a lot of new lads and other guys back from injury; judging the talents and fitness of those isn’t easy as there is a big difference between training and games. I’d hope lads realise from some of the selections this year that they are picked objectively and without bias. If the calls are proved wrong than that is just a judgement issue. Credit to the lads this year though, if there was any lingering annoyance, no-one has spat the dummy and everyone has been pulling in the same direction.

The Championship team will be gunning to finish a largely successful year on a high and we’d be lying if we said that dampening The Hague’s celebrations wasn’t motivation. We got some calls wrong down in Budapest so will hope that with a few adjustments we can bridge the narrow gap between ourselves them tomorrow. That’s not to discount the challenge of Lux and Paris. They’ve been ding dong battles all year and will be as close as any game against The Hague.

The spotlight will be on The Shield though. 15 teams are competing in four groups. That means only one team from each group qualify for the semi. The B’s face off against Lyon, Amsterdam and Rennes. Group of death comes to mind but our lads have a more than sturdy look about them so should be full of confidence. If they win it out on Saturday, they take the overall title. That would be our biggest achievement since the club was founded.

For the second time this year we will field a 3rd team. We are doing so with minimal effort, no shaking trees or knocking on doors. It’s not a mickey mouse team either. Martin Crowley, Conor Aylward, Matti Bertrand and John Harkin are the club stalwarts giving the team backbone. The latter three have all played big roles on the B’s and even A’s in the last couple of years but other commitments this year meant we haven’t seen as much of them.

They’ll be joined by new lads like Kitch, Cathal McCabe and proud Munster man John Nganga. Pat Barrett and Mike Lucey bring a lot of football to the show so these lads will be no-one’s whipping boys.

With the girls bringing 30+ players and a host of other supporters joining on the day, we should have well over 80 people down there. Another great day in store but how we will remember the day is by how well we perform on the pitch.