This was it! Our first day of football! We were all up early and after a fabulous breakfast were on the bus on the way to one of the Coerver grounds in Tokyo, in Hachioji. The kids were entered in a local football tournament that I think happens once a month and were going to play school teams from around the district. Not all were students of Coerver, but the majority were. As we stood around watching the u9's and u10's warm up, we could see right away that their individual skill levels were very high. The matches were to be 4 mins each for the little tikes and 6 mins for the oldies. Each group played maybe 6 matches I think and though they were only very short, and were being played on a futsal size pitch, they were fast and furious. The coach described it as a sprint. They're very exciting games to watch and by the end of them they were all exhausted.
The day was cool with the remainder of the Taiphoon keeping the temperature low for the morning and although it looked like it might rain, by lunch time it had all blown away and the older kids felt the full strength of the Tokyo sun, funnily enough not just on their faces (there were a few red ones by the late afternoon) but also under foot. The synthetic grass fields have little black beads made of recycled tyres spread around them instead of sand and the beads heat up so much with the sun beating down on them, that after a while I couldn't bare standing on them and had to stand on a bench. When I commented on the heat under foot, Itoh san (one of the head coaches who has been visiting with us in Australia for the past 3 months) said playing on them in summer is much worse because the heat also get's reflected up off the beads and is almost as bad a heat reflected up of concrete. I was thankful that this tour was i autumn.
The under 9/10's tournament was first and our teams did very well. One of the teams played off for 3rd and 4th (I think, I'll check that tomorrow) and theywere all excited and had a great time. The under 11/12's played after lunch and Grant's team (Aus Gold) unfortunately were a bit shell shocked and started off poorly. This was Grant's first game of soccer in about a month after having time off for a chest infection and then suffering a slight groin injury the first day back at training. With only a week to go before the trip, we decided to ur on the side of caution and give him a longer rest from training and keep the ice and compression up on his injury to make sure he was fit for the tour. This was great for his injury, but not so good for his fitness and form, but we had to make a call and we thought this was best.
Anyway, he did start to find his touch and seemed to feel more comfortable there by the end of the day. Too tired to write any more, will continue tomorrow if I find time...loveto all x
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