Back On Tour

I must apologise for my lack of whinging. I have been partaking in some pretty heavy time travel and only just got back next week.

In that time I had one of those momentous weekends that live long in the memory. Like this time last year I took 24 of my favourite female footballers to a tournament in Taupo and it was, in a word, emotional.

As anyone who coaches will know, tournaments are a special time anyway but our group is a pretty special one and there is nothing more rewarding than seeing those you take rise and overcome the challenges they face (on and off the field) with the confidence and skill you’ve helped to install in them.

This is particularly the case when those you coach are girls, because if there’s one thing that is really tough to do these days it’s growing up as a teen girl in the world we live in. In our group the girls are able to put those pressures aside and really grow and express themselves as equals. That’s the bit I love about coaching, I really do.

Mrs ClubDes and Junior were there with me this time round too and that made for an extra special time of it because they usually don’t get to share in that with me, so I really did have the family on tour with me, in more ways than one.

The weekend wasn't a complete success though.

No group of girls mentioned how cool my boots were this year so perhaps it's time for an upgrade. You know it is actually when he-who-lays-out-the-cones-at-training aka Bruiser has three flash pairs to your one...jammy bugger.

All Gone Ron.

Yes, this is another blog about football. Don’t like football? Tough, it’s my blog. Why don’t you like football, what’s wrong with you?

But I’ll keep this brief, just for you haters.

If there’s one thing I hate it’s a sore loser and I know a thing or two about sore losing because when it comes to the world’s biggest, I’m right up there. Not that I demonstrate this in front of my girls mind you, my responsibility to them to be the best coach I can be is far more important than me getting my sulk on.

In almost nine years of coaching I’m proud to say I have lost my rag only the once and even then it was due to the ref being a deaf, dumb, blind man with no legs.

So it pisses me off when I see guys like Christiano Ronaldo start talking conspiracy theories and shit after being beaten across two games, fair and square, like Real Madrid were by Barcelona yesterday. In fact the game was the antithesis of anything resembling a conspiracy given that the referee flatly refused to send one of the Madrid boys off despite him fouling anybody that came within kicking distance.

Ronaldo is King of the Sulks. He’s also the second best and one of the most recognisable players in the world and he didn’t get to be either by packing a sad every time he lost.

Well. He probably did, because he’s that kind of guy, but it’s fair to say his talent, not his tanties that got him to where he is. So maybe he should just man up and take it on that magnificent waxed chest of his, or maybe, just maybe, work a bit harder during the game to really do something about it.

My chest, on the other hand, is neither magnificent nor tanned but even I can take a loss or two, except this past weekend when my beloved Spurs lost to Chelsea in controversial circumstances. I should have known that when the ref arrived dressed as a mime that things were going to get a bit tasty. Thus the Chavs won, not by one, but two incorrectly given goals.

Now I can accept a fuck up from a volunteer official. I see it almost every game my teams play but like I always say to my girls you just have to accept that the ref is just a guying living vicariously through his daughter and he’s going to be as biased as shit. You can’t change it; you just have to get on with it.

But you expect more of highly paid professionals that do it for a living. If we relax this expectation then let’s save everybody’s time and just have a series of 38 coin tosses at the start of the season and decide the champions that way. I for one would get a few more hours of sleep a season.

Sometimes I wonder if life would be easier if I just decided to follow one of those teams that seem to win everything, like Real Madrid.

Nah, fuck it. It’s all gone Ron for them anyway.

Girls Interrupted

If coaching girls football has taught me anything of late it’s just how fragile our beautiful young women are in a world that seems determined to mess them right up.

Like the episode of Glee I watched the other day which was supposed to highlight the downside of underage teenage drinking but actually did the reverse on account that a) it actually looked pretty cool and b) nobody got hurt. Oh sure they played some spin the bottle and the gay guy pashed the straight girl but that was about as hard core as it got.

Nope, no power chucks out the back door the consistency of which looked remarkably similar to the take ways you had before you arrived to line the stomach. No fist fights between alpha males, or a girl getting themselves the unfortunate nickname of 'BJ' on account of what they were doing with a guy on the front lawn and there was certainly no one having their heart broken after drunkenly declaring their love for the object of their affection who has never, ever known they’ve existed. Or ever will.

Maybe the parties they have in the States are different to the ones we went to?

Sometimes I take heart that not everybody in showbiz is out to get our girls. Even though music videos like Snoop Doggy Doggs latest try their best, they are occasionally offset by the likes of Pink and her songs 'Fucken Perfect', the uncut video to which is both shocking and inspiring.

Pink is awesome by the way. The singer that is, not the colour which was invented by Tom Cruise. True story.

Ironically Pink's video gets edited for general consumption whereas Snoop and his gyrating, invisible, greasy pole dancing lady friend’s effort are broadcast in all its soft porn glory. How awesome a person do you have to be to star in a video like that? I wonder if her son will love it the day his teenage mates admit they’ve all rubbed one out over it. More than once.

Pink is not alone in doing it for her sisters of course, Katy Perry sings about releasing the inner firework - which is great - but it only really balances the ledger after her lying naked in candyfloss for an earlier video which incidentally starred, wait for it, Snoop Doggy Dogg.

Likewise Selena Gomez, one of the many Disney Channel starlets, has a song out soon (and haven’t they all) which too talks of young girls realising the beauty within. Scratch another one up for the positive role model score board. Fingers crossed then that she doesn’t stuff it all up by following in the footsteps of her fellow Disney alumni and pose in some risqué cell phone pics like Miley, or completely nude, like Ashley.

Meanwhile, over in the medium of film, that great educator of just how to conduct yourself as a young lady, we have the recent efforts from the likes of Anne Hathaway and Natalie Portman, both potential role models for our teenage girls, where they play characters who find love not through a mutually beneficial relationship, but a casual sexual one.

Yeah. Not since Olivia Newton John dressed as a slut to get the guy in Grease has there been such a misguided message sent to young ladies everywhere.

And I know it’s everywhere these days, this sexploitation of attractive youth, but that doesn’t make it right and it really gets on my tits. The one positive is that it makes me want to give my girls the very best in support, encouragement and confidence through my coaching.

I hope I'm achieving that. I really do.

Kickin' It With My Girls

Just when I thought that memorable weekends were a thing of the past I have two of my Top Five, ever, in the one year.

First was Melski’s and Emski’s wedding in May. Second was just this weekend past and our taking my girls football team to the world famous in NZ McCartney tournament in Taupo.

Now I’ve coached a lot of football, seven years worth to be exact, but I’ve never had a team that has left me with such a sense of reward as my girls have this season. Don’t get me wrong, I love my boys too, not in an NAMBLA way mind you, but girl’s football is different to that of the boys.

Oh and I recommend you don’t Google that particular acronym unless you really want to see the Department of Internal affairs confiscate your hard drive in a 6am dawn raid.

Girls approach the game differently. They play in the true spirit of the game where with the boys stuff gets real serious real fucken quick and pretty soon no one is really enjoying themselves. Unless you’re winning, then that’s pretty cool.

My girls still have that same desire to win but they go about it differently. They look at the game holistically and understand that to win they all need to play well as a team. Boys will always try and do it alone. Always.

My girls also soak stuff up like a sponge. If I teach one of them a turn I know I’ll see it executed the very next game, do the same with my boys and I’ll be waiting weeks before they decide that they’ll give it a go.

And I had forgotten how much fun girls in a group are, particularly between the ages of 11 and 14 like mine are. Needless to say once someone mentioned that they’d be carrying my balls on the road trip up it became the running joke that I could never quite live down. And here was I thinking I had heard every in-your-end-o comment that could be made regarding balls in a bag...

On the field they did me proud, off it they were just as impressive. Not that they were the only ones; an early highlight of the weekend was a group of older girls calling out to me “nice boots”. Oh yes. You know you’ve made good in the footballing world when shit hot female footballers dig your F30’s..

There is one added advantage of having 11 & 12 year old girls in the car; they don’t mind the songs you have on your iPod that you chose in the hope it would somehow help you regain your youth, because they sing along to Lady Gaga and Ke$ha just as loud as you do. The Jonas Brothers track did raise an eyebrow though, admittedly.

So girls, heaven forbid none of you ever read this because this blog is filthy and clearly written by someone very immature, but if you are or do, you should know that you rocked my world this weekend.

I hereby adopt you all as my own.