Rd1 Defeat Overshadowed

Difficult to write this one without becoming a little animated. There was one event which unavoidably dominates Rd 1 of the Benelux Championship. Mid-way through our second game of the day (against Den Haag), a couple of melees erupted, one spilling over from the sideline. There was nothing overly serious in either and calm was restored relatively quickly. Or maybe not.

A fairly standard free was awarded to Den Haag around their square. As the players moved away to their positions, Timmy was punched in the side of the head and knocked to the ground.

The player was red carded but the consequences for Timmy would be greater. In the immediate aftermath of the game, he came up to me, with a mouth full of cotton wool and blood pouring out the gaps. He said he couldn't play on outfield but would go in goal. Sums him up pretty well. There was only one place he was going though and that was to the hospital.

To make a long story short, he returned to Brussels with a cracked tooth and two fractures in his jaw. He was operated on last night at 18h and returned home this morning, facing into four weeks with his jaw wired shut, eating through a straw. This blog isn't a forum for further elaboration on the incident itself so for once I will hold my council.

Anyone who has lived away from home will know well the feeling of isolation when something bad & personal happens to you. It's a miserable place to be. Timmy's handling of the situation has been unreal though. He had to go to two hospitals when we got back to Brussels on Saturday night but still joined up with the team afterwards. On Sunday, another hospital visit and then there was a going away party for Griff in his gaff and he stayed in relatively good spirits sucking on his Mr. Freeze for the night!

Shane Ryan, as only he could do, summed up the feelings of all. He said his best moments in G.A.A. have been lived vicariously, citing Limerick '11 as one example. His worst moment was also vicarious (correct use Shane). Seeing a friend and teammate having to suffer through such a situation, having done so little to provoke it, is fairly sickening.

In some ways it highlighted to us all how lucky we are to have the club. Fellas rallied around quickly to keep his spirits up. Texts poured in from former players and Den Haag player Paul Bradfield, currently working in Uganda, sent a very sincere text on Sunday expressing his regret at the incident. The girls came up trumps with the soup too (mental note; be nicer to the girls).

The incident put the football in perspective but there was still some played so some summary is necessary.

Controlling the controllables is a good way of looking at your preparation. We failed miserably in that department on Saturday. When our first game was due to start at 10h30, there were three Belgium players on the pitch. It had Munich Bus disaster written all over it.

On that occasion, a massive row killed our day. Having learned from that, I bit an almighty hole in my tongue and proceeded as if nothing happened. We lost the game by a point to a team who travelled two hours further that morning but were still on the pitch to prepare properly. Whether the game was won or lost due to this is impossible to tell but as we said in the day’s wrap-up, there should not be a question mark over something that is within our own control. Lesson learned and we move on.

Next up was Den Haag. We stood off their forwards and they raced into a first-half lead. We clawed our way back into it in the second half but the gap was too big to close and Timmy's loss too great a burden to carry in our forwards.

Amsterdam needed to beat us to secure a final place. Having broken a 16 game losing streak against Den Haag earlier in the day and with a win against us chalked up earlier in the month, they would have fancied their chances. We were fairly pumped though, not wanting to leave a tournament without a win. In Tim's absence, the captaincy was transferred to Griff, who was playing in his final tournament.

His brief was fairly simple; set the tone for how we are going to play for the rest of the year. He did just that, literally diving around the place to get the ball. An equally impressive contribution came from Ross who notched 1-1 from wing back. We won 2-6 to 1-5 having survived a late barrage on our goal.

The day was not over as we had to face the same opposition in the 3rd/4th place playoff. There wasn’t much between the teams in the first game and we expected another big challenge. These games can be deemed meaningless by many but a win would but a different perspective on our day and send us back into training on a positive note.

We were in our stride at this stage and led from early on, closing it out 3-6 to 0-7.
While all that was going on, our Shield team were in action on the other pitch. They lost the opening game to Amsterdam B but picked themselves up to beat Dusseldorf 0-5 to 0-2 to qualify for the final.

That game highlighted the main issue of the day for the team which was their attacking play. Personally, I was very disappointed with it as guys who were doing the right things at training were unrecognisable.

There was a hesitancy to shoot, uncertainty in possession and a lack of vision on the ball. That’s a fairly damning assessment but it’s based on an expectation created in in-house games by the players themselves. There was no question about guy’s effort or commitment but the decision making betrayed them.

The root cause of this has to be a lack of experience. Most of the guys haven’t much football under their belts so it highlights the importance of the in-house games in their (all of our) development.

Finally, the ladies, playing in the new regional format, split their teams without an apparent dip in performance. They squared off against Holland in the final and ran out victors in an exciting game.

Fortunately for some of you, I’ve spared you the detailed analysis because I’m still chewing over the stats and video collected at the weekend!! More to follow...