Backs To The Wall

It seems like this has been the same story since the last Benelux Rd of 2011.

In our home tournament a month ago we had over forty players. On Saturday we travel to Maastricht having scrapped two teams of players together – around twenty three players.

The latest blow is the loss of Enda today. With both keepers missing, he was the next in line. Filling the two keeper spots remains our challenge between now and Saturday.

Up to this year, there was no talking to me the week of a tournament. The amount of stress myself and Collie B took on to make sure preparation was perfect was crazy. Two things have changed lately.

We are slowly preparing to step away from the football set-up, at least in training/administration roles. The chasing of players this week was done mainly by the captains, Timmy and Johnny. The training in recent weeks has been led by Cormac and Ross.

Training has been excellent. Our numbers are down but Cormac has showed everyone the level of intensity which we should be training at. Even when he hasn’t been there, we’ve slowly being going up a notch.

Training on Monday night was particularly feisty. Late tackles, stray arms, poking and prodding. Johnny P took a nice shiner away with him. Tonight, Karl headed for a few stitches in his chin. The signs are good.

What we have this year, is a bunch of dogs. The one thing we can be sure of on Saturday is that everyone will back each other up and no-one will be hiding, minding themselves. The atmosphere in the camp is excellent and the core is as close as it has ever been.

However, the biggest question mark that has always hung over us is whether our big players can pull it out when the chips are down. Other teams have won tournaments from that position but too often we haven’t drained every drop of potential out of our guys.

Doing just that is the goal for our two teams on Saturday.