Ring Rust

For the first time in a month I played yesterday. Six a side. It was a miracle I turned up after finally going to bed at four in the morning.

I reached late (0185 hrs) and the game was in flow. Luckily I didn't have to wait on the sidelines for long as one of the boys left and I subbed in. Just like that. One month layoff, no warm up, no stretching, straight in. Add to that my boots are a size too small for me and have hardly anything left inside them leaving me very uncomfortable throughout.

I played a central box-to-box role and was by my poor and fluctuating standards, a failry decent outing. I managed to win posession many times and started some attacks. Our team had one player in a red jersey who seemed capable of carrying the ball and posing a threat and I tried to play as his feeder. Unfortunately we never got any great understanding going and he seemed to lack a bit of trust in me. We could have done better, but as it was it wasn't too bad.

My regular teammates were all on the opposing side and were off colour themselves. Easy to take the ball off and not passing like they can. In the end it finished around level on scores (we didn't keep count) with no one team really playing better than the other.

Speaking of myself, I thought my trapping and tackling were okay but I was really slow on the turn and the passing was a bit of a disaster. I did manage to score once from a goalmouth scrap, but apart from that got into very few scoring positions and messed up one good chance. The fitness of course is far from its best and I hope I don't have many more long periods of absence.

Tomorrow we play again :-). The problem now is going to be with weekday games. Tullu's apartment at NGV next to the ground used to be our regular changing room after the mid-week game. Will have to figure out how to shower before getting into work after a weekday morning game pretty soon. But before that...new cleats!