Darren's Thoughts
OK we are nearly at Christmas, so here is what I have been thinking (surprisingly it is all about korfball). I have had a few thoughts about the clubs. Next week I will give some views on MKX and the youth set up and then the week after I will get personal with opinions on a few players (thin ice eh!). If you have any views then please add them to the website.
The Clubs
I am really pleased that Rogues are building nicely and that I have virtually nothing to do with them. It is not that I don’t like Michael and I think that Ed is smelly, more that there are forming into a great little club with what I can see is a good team spirit. Rogues now go to the pub after training, they have redesigned their website to a yellow background as they want to get their own new shirts. That is excellent as for years I have run around setting up clubs just to fill the shirts I have bought. I have a thing for kit that I seem to have resisted lately (saying that I do have 12 navy T-shirts under my desk I picked up cheap just in case we had a Roos third team spring up). Rogues even have their own Christmas social on 8th December. And I know Rogues is a nice club people Cecile W said in quite a cute French way “Rogues are lovely, it is such a nice club, aaahhhh”. I know Cecile has been enjoying her korfball, well that was until we broke her at a Roos session. Whoops. So well done to Michael and to Ed and others. The club will be one year old in January, so building nicely.
Colossus has been building under Beth, a really top coach. Beth was at training the other Monday leading what I heard was an excellent session the day after taking Scotland to second place in the European Bowl West competition which has qualified the Scots for the 16 Nation Euro Championships in Holland next October. I would like a team trip out there to support Beth and even support Scotland (that goes a bit against my welsh heritage – I always wanted to play for Wales but guess I never will unless they have a vets team for shorter than average height yet remarkably handsome poetic players that aren’t any good a collecting but do a wonderful fake (such a good fake that Chelsie twice put the ball into my face in the last City match). Anyway – back to Colossus and off me. The numbers have been rising and Colossus is top of our mini-league of club nights in the League. We all lag behind the Oakgrove team of ‘non-playing’ teachers, who now top the league. They are doing very well, playing strong and sometime quite physical korfball and with their own improvised korfball tactics, but it is working and I am delighted they are supporting korfball back at their school. Their presence has even motivated some Walton High teachers to join Rogues and we are planning a teachers mini tournament next week. It is just a shame that all the teachers at Shenley BE are rubbish!!!. We are looking at relocating Colossus from Lord Grey to Woughton Academy. The new hall at the Academy is brilliant and I hope the time we can have the hall can be a little bit longer. The hall is also closer to CMK which I think is important for people straight from work. We will also be starting some sessions for students at the College after Christmas – so some of the students could come straight along and join Colossus. Kelly has been doing a fine job as Captain Whiplash, rallying the troops and with the addition of Clive from Bucks a Madame Ay from Roos and others the club is getting competitive. And Graham (Zorro) is still there bouncing around and collecting the cash – cheers. It just needs to pick up at least 10 more players. Especially as Woughton will be a lot more expensive, but a new area (this is actually where Colossus moved from in September 2008) and a new catchment, we will see. But as always, drag your mates along.
And Roos and Wallabies, well… It was great when Andy was around to have two coaches to handle the biggest group, though I think I should have used him more than I did. I do get carried away with the drills and the sound of my own voice sometimes. Things have been going well to a degree. The numbers are around the same as this time last year but standards are definitely improving. We used to struggle for men but with players like Neil, Darren, Tim, Stu, Louie and Marcus having joined we seem to be the other way round with a few of the women less regular of late – surely nothing to do with my failing looks is it? So go and pull a few more women in, they will love my charm and Andy would also be very grateful. Roos sit solidly at the bottom of the league – a true testament to the coaching on offer! Well, we have had two situations really with Roos providing more players for City than I originally anticipated (because of the progress of 10G and Cash and Pete and Emma being mainstays along with Vixter) and because a few of the higher players at the other club nights have been injured, ill or in love! Or pregnant!! Lee is the main culprit there (I wont say in which category). We have also lost a couple of girls from Wallabies I was hoping would stick around, so Roos have been feeding Wallabies. There has however been great improvement of many players, but I think we will have to allocate a few Roos (mainly girls) into Wallabies and then try and get some consistency as lack of knowledge of where team mates will be running is the main downfall, not a lack of ability or effort. And clearly we will have to get the strongest team for Roos, our first team, and the improvers with a few old heads in Wallabies. Emma Green does keep going on at me about spreading resources too thinly, which is pretty valid, I am a dreamer though. The fixtures are all on the website, so please do try and prioritise the match weekends to be available as often it is not that we don’t have enough players it is that we don’t have enough players available (we do suffer from players with personalities having a life outside korfball). I am planning on recruiting JLS so we can boost the number of new women and playing and I will also be signing up the Saturdays, just because that would be lovely. And Natalie Imbruglia will soon make her debut I am sure. Wallabies have their own version of Natalie in the South African pocket dynamo that is Wanda. Her enthusiasm is infectious and she is fun loving and she bring freshly laundered shirts to matches on coat hangers. She is doing a great job under only fleeting duress (I am her boss a work but I rarely threaten her with disciplinary procedures for not getting her line up sorted by Thursday lunch time).
And finally City (I will talk about MKX separately next week). Emma is immense. She is a leader with a sharp brain, the heart of a lion and the grip of a titan (please let go of my throat Emma). I do sincerely mean it when I say how grateful I am to her for running City in a thoughtful but competitive way. She leads from the front but does always think about those that may be lagging behind. Now, our aim this year was for a consistent City team to play in SMKA to prepare them for OKA. That hasn’t happened for many reasons (illness, pregnancy, love etc) and so the team has been morphing between games but still sits second top in the OKA second division with 3 wins and 2 draws and no losses. We have lost only one OKA match in 1 ½ seasons now but 4 wins shows a strong defence but more ability on the shot and on collect is needed and a better tactical awareness that again consistency builds up. The players that have stepped up have stepped up well such as Tim and Cash and we are now bringing in the MKX players, who will be stars in the future. We need to try and get a settled team and push on to finish in the top half of the league and qualify for 3 more matches, because we can, and I believe we will, win the league. I would like every player in the clubs to aspire to play for City (and then higher). But if you just want to come and play and have fun, then we will have plenty of room for you too. The clubs I hope will always be more than just a reason to play a great sport.
By next summer I would like to see if the three clubs can each set up their own committees, have their own accounts and continue to build their distinct identities. But we should always try and look out for each other, so I would be happy with an element of join fundraising and sharing of costs, of joint promotions and joint drinking and maybe continuing with a higher level combined team, maybe in the regional league in a couple of years time. But, I keep getting reminded of this, we must walk first before learning to fly without a plane.
I think I will end here, but it does leave me with the thought. I would like the clubs to move forward and expand, but to do that we do need to have a few more people prepared to do a few more jobs. This year has been great as the load is being shared more. I would like to thank people like Jess and Mark Hancock – they are not married that should read Jess Hobbs – for stepping up and for people like Emma Cash, Katie, Graham, Emma Green, Vixter and others for all their help. But we do need more coaches and we do need more refs or we are limited to me, Michael and Beth doing a lot of running around. We will be running a refs course soon and I would encourage some of you to start thinking about getting into coaching. It is rewarding (even coaching Mim) and if we have a few then it will be coaching beginners maybe once a month or coaching on one night and being coached on another. Anyway – I am writing this on a days leave – so I had better get on to doing nothing.
Cheers
Darren