Day 40

Day 40

We arrived at the Ruyterwacht learning centre at 8:40. It was time to head to Riverton crèche which was located in Bishop Lavis, which is a coloured community approximately 10-15 minutes from Ruyterwacht. This was our first session at Riverton, so children are bound to be a little shy and unfamiliar of who we are! When we introduce ourselves, We get them to scream our name as loud as they can so it can get it can cemented in their minds! "LUUUUUUKEEEEE" and "JEFFFFFFFFF" always echo through the corridor when we make our second appearance which is nice! So we make sure we always introduce ourselves correctly in our first session! Oh, and how could I forget.. We get them to scream "AAAARRRSEEENAAAAL". They never forget that and after our lesson that's all we hear in the classrooms prior to leaving! The parents and teachers must hate arsenal by the end of the day! We're actually promoting Arsenal quite well if you think about it! The group we had today did all the fun activities well, after a couple screaming sessions to get them energised! The train exercise was again the highlight, that never ever ever ever fails! They love it. The crawling through the legs is always done with bursts of laughing and giggling fits which is of course funny to watch as a coach! Looking forward to going back their next week. I posted some photos earlier of our session!

After some admin work back at the office and some chilling time.. We headed to our second appointment  which was in Mitchell's plain! A place with the biggest coloured community in the world. A place where gangsterism was a high. A place where approximately half of the people are addicted to drugs. But most of all A PLACE THAT LOVES SOCCER.. And that's why we were there! We visited Princeton high school to coach their under 19 team which was perfect! It had been around a week since our last session with anyone above the age of 13-14! The drills we set were of a higher standard and allowed us to show off more technical drills than usual. We did Arsenal v Kaizer Chiefs (who wear an orangey colour) as a warm up. Their arguably the biggest team in South Africa.. Can't believe I didn't think of using them as my orange team in that drill.

We then based our session around the game of "piggy in the middle". There are so many variations to do for that for example.. 1 touch,2 touch, left foot, right foot, two people in middle holding cone between them.. Just to name a few! We had two squares of 13 and we progressed it into a competition between to two squares. Each person would be given a number in each square 1-13. Then the two people who were number 1 would go in the opposite square and defend for a minute putting his opposition team under pressure and trying to prevent them getting a higher score than his original team. So for example I would say "Team 2.. What did you get?" And they would reply "10" Then I'd say to Team 1 "what did you ge?t" and they may reply "8". Therefore Team 2 are 1-0 up as they managed to do more successful passes than team 1. This was then repeated up to number 13. Each defender is only in for one minute so the game was fast paced and not too tiring for the defender. The overall score came to 6-6, one round was a tie as both teams managed to do 11 successful passes without getting caught by their opposition defender. It's a drill Jeff and I had been wanting to do for a while as the element of competition often gets players buzzed and the piggy in the middle format can be used for a good while! When doing the competition we used the restriction of they HAD TO take two touches before passing and then halfway through we switched it to one touch as both teams were doing well and we really wanted to test them. It was a really really good session and we looking forward to coming back in a couple weeks.

We finished up at 3:30, travelled back to the learning centre and then made our usual route home! Bus and train. We stopped at De Waal Park and decided to get off to take a scenic walk back. We saw a dog training lesson going on and we decided to watch that for a few minutes! Jeff and I both love dogs and I certainly miss Holly, our family dog back in England! A miniature schnauzer is her breed and she's a little devil. Only messing! She wouldn't hurt a fly! (Unless there was food involved).

Overall a nice day!!

It's Jeff's birthday tomorrow! 21! We have a crèche session in the morning in Greenlands but apart from that, we have the afternoon off! Then we have an evening meal which Lourens and Joe have organised! Really nice of them and I'm sure Jeff will really appreciate it.

All the best.

Luke