MFC Old Boy

MFC Presentation Ball Photos

2010-10-23T20:37:00.001-07:00

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/lh/sredir?uname=114956510636765555555&target=ALBUM&id=5531442219160076449&authkey=Gv1sRgCPul-o7zyej2NQ&invite=CNLi2-QN&feat=email

End of Season Poem

2010-09-11T15:11:00.000-07:00

The goals are down, the lines will fade,
games won and lost and legends made.
We'll wash and sort and fold and pack,
jerseys and bibs in ordered stacks.
Mixed emotions for some, but don't feel grey,
Sign on is just 20 weeks away.

Tapps. 11 September 2010

Bonanza

2010-04-23T21:03:00.000-07:00

No not the TV show, but our exploits on the Football field. My old boys have started the season with a win, a loss and a draw. All close games. The boys have won their games and Chooz remains undefeated at Netball (a magnificent display at Centre this morning).

But this post will be dedicated to the Div 7 Women's team. Last night we traveled across town for our first Friday night game of the season. Our coach was away on business and as many of the other hubbies play in my old boys team I was left with coaching and managing duties (committed as I am, or is that "Committed"? Several of our squad work on Friday nights, so slightly "undermanned" and armed with a strategic post-it note from the coach I sent the lambs in to face the wolves.

My heart was in my mouth for the opening minutes. The wolves set up camp in our half and we had to settle ourselves in defense. I haven't officially coached a team since Chooz played "under 6" and I doubted my ability to "coach" us out of this corner. Happily, once we cleared the ball from our half we went on the attack and we were quickly a goal up. Our attacking mid field, emboldened by the excellent defense of our backs opened up the wolves underbelly and fed goal scoring opportunities up to our strikers. Time and again we played around the mid field and cut through the defenders to take pot shots at goal. By half time we were 8 goals in front.

During the second half we consolidated our lead. We took the opportunity to play out a few different scenarios (brilliant coaching strategy really =) ) and by full time we were ten goals clear. The wolves had a few more opportunities in the second half but our defense was more than equal to the task and they were again kept goalless.

I can't really take any credit for the win as their stand in coach (I just followed instructions and the players did all the work) but I will happily sit here immersed in the glory of their win. I confidently predict it will not be their last.

Coming of age - again

2010-04-19T01:40:00.000-07:00

Time for a confession. A few weeks ago I celebrated my 40th birthday. Surprising I know, "surely that gorgeous, virile, energetic, funny man can't be 40", you think...but trust me it's true.
I remember as an 18 year old listening to AFKAP singing about partying like it was 1999 and thinking that I would be WAY tool old to enjoy myself when that finally rolled around. As it turned out I spent the night nursing my newborn son and dancing around a paddock waiting for Russian Y2K susceptible satellites too fall from the sky. The world didn't end...so a good result all round (well except for those people who sold everything and went to live in an underground bunker somewhere with a shotgun, 365 cans of SPAM and a years supply of Evian [naive spelt backwards] but I digress).

So my beautiful wife, the red head, organised a fancy dress party for me, a "J" party no less. Now I know some people think fancy dress is just for boring people who don't know how to have a good time (and there was a few of them there), but me, I love them...people seem to get into the spirit a lot faster when they aren't themselves. I went as a Jester (any excuse to embarrass me with tights) whilst the red head went as Juno.
We had Jedi's and Jillaroo's, Jockeys and Jamaicans (excellent),John Cena and Jeff Hardy, Jason (13) and Justice League (Wonder Woman went straight to the w@nk bank), Judges, Jurors, Janitors and a pair of J Lo's. 181 played live and Daz the un-dresser didn't disappoint (?)

The red head gave a fantastic speech, which was undoubtedly the highlight of the night for me. It did present me with one problem though. How to outdo and embarrass her when her big night rolls around. Well, I have 11 months to plan for it...look out.

Aftermath

2010-04-10T21:55:00.000-07:00

As a student at one of Brisbane's better private schools I never imagined that 22 years in the future one of my class mates would take to me with a knife leaving me in hospital. A 10cm scar, the removal of something I had come to depend upon and the addition of a rubber band, a screw and some washers to what was once a perfectly functional joint was not how I would have imagined our reunion even if I had known that my contemporary was dreaming of becoming an Orthopedic Surgeon.
Don't take your joints for granted. I lost the use of my left shoulder for 7 weeks and even though I am right handed there were many simple tasks I found almost impossible during that time. Putting on my shoes, reverse parking and cutting up my dinner all spring to mind. Obviously the person who thought it was a good idea to put screw tops on beer bottles had two opposable thumbs and a full complement of working AC joints.
Which brings us to 2010, a year that began with some of my extended family at the Illuka Bowls Club. 2 grandmothers, 2 uncles, 2 aunts, 4 mothers, 2 fathers, 7 brothers, 6 sisters and a boat. The late addition of my niece's fibreglass cast to the mix was surprisingly well received.
February saw a return to normalcy for the family with my return to work. No longer would every meal consist of some random beast being softened in the slow cooker, the lawns could once more be forced into an uneasy truce and the dirty clothes could again start climbing back out of the laundry hamper. Within a week my tenure as Mr Mum was forgotten and I was as bored with working as though I'd never been away. If only our household finances could regain the status quo as smoothly.
By March I was back on the training field albeit gingerly. My team mates danced around me trying hard not to make contact, whether from kinship for me or fealty to the red head I'll let you judge. The suggestion was even floated that I wear a large inner tube around my waist, much like a bumper car, so that I couldn't hit the ground again. Thankfully this delicacy didn't last long and soon I was once again being bumped around like the Pinball Wizard's silver ball. My lack of skill on the field is balanced by a fairly low centre of gravity and a high concentration of testosterone. If I couldn't turn and chase down my more skilled opponents after they'd run round me, and put my body on the line bumping them off the ball I would be absolutely no good to anybody.
The soccer season's infancy of course means nothing like normalcy for our household. Our intimacy with the local club (some might call it an unhealthy obsession) means that we are out of the house a lot. Sign On, equipment sorting, field marking, coaches meetings and multiple training sessions each week make for an extremely chaotic first term. The fact that we now have 1 netballer and 4 soccer players in the house adds to the drama. How 2 parents are supposed to take 3 children in 3 different directions every Saturday morning is yet to be seen.
So it is with a certain amount of chagrin that I find myself as the manager of my wifes soccer team. Unlike my own team mates who are all Over 35, the red heads team consists of ladies from the ages of 15 to 50 with the accompanying assortment of skills and fitness. Yesterday was their first game and they were easily the better team, fitter, faster, better looking and more skilled. As seems to be the case with all teams I am associated with... they lost...but I look forward to very soon regaling you with stories of their glorious success.

Apologies

2010-04-09T20:58:00.000-07:00

Almost fourteen months since my last post, such reckless disregard for my solitary blog follower. Three seasons of football have passed since last I sat at this keyboard trying to emulate the prose of my verbose sibling.
Not surprisingly those 30 something games of soccer have seen many more defeats than victories a subject you and I have quickly become bored with, which is the main reason for my absence. Not to suggest that I haven't had anything else to write about, but my juices flow more on the back of success. Like many sporting writers I might just have to resort to other peoples...
October saw 17 of us old boys travel to Armidale for an end of season carnival. As you can imagine the major attraction was four days away from everything, drinking and playing up with my mates. The fact that we had to play 6 games of soccer was a minor inconvenience. Friday morning saw us depart MFC in a mini bus piloted by the Kiwi. The sorrowful cries of our loved ones were drowned out by the hiss of beer cans, and the arrival unannounced of 17 hungry, noisy drunks at KFC in Stanthorpe has now, no doubt, seen several major ammendments to the Colonel's operations manual. Likewise I'm sure the solitary Constable on RBT duty in Deepwater has regaled his comrades many times with the tale of the bus full of singing old blokes, in particular the one with his jeans around his ankles akimbo an esky in the aisle. Whilst we are on the subject of singing and public nudity, I should apologise to the lady in the Service Station who got flashed and everyone who had the misfortune of dining in the Mandarin Chinese Restaurant that night.
All of this brings us to 6 games of soccer over two days. The first five games passed without major incident. We acquitted ourselves well without actually winning a game. Over the course of the weekend we tried various methods to warm ourselves up and by the time the final game rolled around we had settled on a regime of drinking in our team bus, pharmacology samples from our Keepers bag and a noisy rendition of Fat Bottomed Girls immediately prior to kickoff. By this stage we had broken or bent a few of our boys and so it was that I was flying up the left wing getting a deft touch on an excellent cross from mid-field. A late and clumsy (I'll shy away from deliberate) tackle from behind saw me on my face outside the field of play but luckily directly adjacent the St Johns tent. By the time my team mates wandered over I had my shirt off, an "Alien" style protuberance sprouting from my shoulder and a jaunty green kazoo in my mouth.

After an ambulance ride and a photo session at Armidale General I traveled home a night early with the Sunshine Coast Churches Team (Kumbaya free thankfully). I like to pretend that our victory in that final game was not directly linked to my absence.
This was the beginning of 14 weeks off work (ever met a one armed sparky?) that would be spent enfolded in the bosom of my family.
A word from the wise...if you are self employed, get income insurance and if you are going to have 14 weeks forced long service leave...don't do over the Christmas school holidays.

Ad infinitum

2009-02-13T00:38:00.000-08:00

I'm gonna have to find something else to write about. Having a superior goal deficit to our opposition is something I have become accustomed to in my 10 or 12 games of soccer but it's not going to make for great literature.

Since my last post we have been overrun twice by gangs of old football players. I've served in goal for 2 of the past 4 halves of combat, and whilst I'm not about to put my hand up to play goalie in the full sized version of the game, I have acquitted myself reasonably well in the protected environment of the "6 a side" goal sanctuary.

You see, the goal circle in this form of the game is a bit like Sheriff Bart's Jail Cell in Rock Ridge, a painted line over which none but the goalie may cross. This seemingly minor protection has the amazing effect of stopping a fully (over)grown man from trampling you in his efforts to embarrass. As no such protection is provided to my full size compatriots...they can keep their jobs with my blessing.

Another rule that both helps and hinders is one that prevents players from kicking the ball over head height. Whilst this protects me from long range bombing sorties and their associated aerial acrobatics, it offers no salvation from Barnes Wallis and his mates. The down side of this rule is that I can't grab the ball and pound it as far as possible from my goal, having instead to work it out along the ground to my team mates. This, not surprisingly, is not unlike trying to throw a hot chip across a splintered green table at the beach without 400 seagulls intercepting it. Unfortunately these seagulls, instead of flying off with their booty, take great pleasure in firing it back past you into the net. The screeching afterwards is strikingly familiar.

This week should see a FULL compliment of willing minds take the field (can't speak for the bodies) and that should make a big difference, as last week we ran with only one substitute on the bench. Spreading the work load over 3 or 4 extra respiratory systems makes a huge difference to blokes of our vintage.

Hopefully my next post may return to it's victorious former glory, if not I may have to start talking about future employment prospects. A subject almost as depressing as recent events in Victoria.

Defeat

2009-02-01T23:19:00.000-08:00

Well...here it is the post you would have expected after last weeks success.

I think I have already established my familiarity with losing. I don't think of myself as a loser, never have, too much self love for that. But given my propensity for it in the fields of sporting endeavour you'd think I would be more able to talk about, flesh it out and give it the same attention to detail as my beautiful piece on Victory, which I have always felt estranged from.

I haven't lost out in the important things in life. I have a beautiful, spirited, sexy wife. Three wonderful, healthy, spirited children (see a connection there). Both my parents are still alive and my Mother in law lives outside walking distance from my warm, spacious home. I know what you are thinking, it hasn't all been rosy. My Brother in law is a Kiwi, but in the grand scheme of things...

But when it comes to sport I feel I am on the wrong side of the ledger. Sure I've had my moments. A bottle full of ribbons, many of them blue for being able to propel myself around a bumpy dirt track faster than most kids my age. A screamer of a catch that I watched all the way into the back of my glove when playing right field for the Moorabbin Panthers. Grand Final wins for Hardies Heroes, Super Ted and Eric and a boundary that flew off a top edge and soured over the slip cordon whilst filling in for the Naval and Military Club. But by and large I've always felt like an also ran in sports race of life. Actually documenting my successes like that makes me feel more accomplished than I did 10 minutes ago, but I digress.

We lost. A fuller compliment of "fit" players this week left me the option of having a few well timed runs (any more that about 3 minutes and I was shagged). Unfortunately I realised this too late after one of theirs ran around and away from me to score un-contested. It was time for the first of many interchanges. The game continued this way and we were down 3-1 at half time.

I felt we played better football (see I'm learning) in the second half. Neither team could penetrate the others defences for the first 15 minutes although many chances were offered and taken and play moved up and down the pitch. The final 5 minutes saw us run out of steam and the game was lost in a flurry of late shots 7-1.

Two quick paragraphs...and I really had to work to pad that out. Imagine how I would have regaled you with our magnificence had we been on the opposite side of that ledger. We still sat afterwards drank amber fluids, belched, farted and laughed (not always in that order) but without the same gusto as when we last met. Still the cares of the world were abandoned for a few hours, the retreat to boyhood that only comes with the company of men, stripped of their worldly encumberances. Defeat however is not so skilled as victory in banishing the concerns of my paternal friends. Life intrudes again until next we meet to chase that elusive suitor, Victory.

Victory

2009-01-21T04:01:00.000-08:00

So, to this the post I actually intended to write tonight. I got side tracked by the lead up thinking it unfair of me to give you the impression that victory was something that came to me lightly. Don't worry, I'm not going to sit here and belittle myself each week. I have always been comfortable with the fact that my lack of sporting prowess had been more that compensated for with my sharp mind, rugged good looks and ability to build or fix almost anything. Not many of us can have it all.

Sporting victory is not something I expected to tell you much about. As I've said previously, my soccer career has been a painful one. A few weeks after my quad recovered, a serious knee injury left me sidelined for the rest of the season. I still had two teams to coach, the clubs website to maintain and various committee duties to fulfill so I was still immersed in soccer even though I couldn't play.

It's hard to explain how attached you can become to something so quickly, how disconnected you can feel from your mates when you can't take to the field with them. Sure I still attended our home games to support them and our social life was filled during the off season with many team and committee outings, but it wasn't the same. The beers didn't taste as sweet when I hadn't earned the thirst they sought to quench. So it wasn't surprising that when the opportunity came up to play in a pre-season social competition, I jumped at it.

Well last night was our first game. My team mates, in an effort to curry favour from my medical team, put me in goal. You might question the friendship of someone who knowingly places a mate into the trajectory of half a kilo of high velocity animal skin with nothing to protect him other than a chalk line and the survival instinct of a bunny caught in your headlights. I can assure you however that this was done to protect my "gumbiness" from the need to run and kick thus exposing my battered tendons to the risks of snapping and stretching.

Now a slight detour. By virtue of the fact that we married sisters, my brother in law is a Kiwi. The kiwi plays soccer. He played it as a kid and now after a long interval he captains the Over 35 team at a neighbouring club. When I found out about the six a side competition I invited him to field a team, knowing that this would give us the opportunity to compete and then enjoy a beer afterwards. As you've probably guessed, we played the Kiwi's team in our first game.

Whilst I've never played in goal before I've watched quite a few good ones and commented about their failings, saying things like..."even I could have got that one." So it was that when the Kiwi's fired off two rapid fire shots, I got them...out of the net and we were two down after five minutes. Things picked up from there, I got my eye in making a few good deflections (actually catching the ball takes actual skill) and even throwing myself on the ball at the feet of two attackers in a desperate attempt to protect my goal. My team mates were also finding their feet and half time saw us behind 3-2.

The second half started badly. I was facing the other way, now looking directly into some field lighting (note how I build the tension, stacking the odds against me) and my safety zone, the goal circle was poorly marked and indistinct making it difficult to judge my position inside the zone. Some quality defence from my team mates saw a number of ICBM style salvos fall wide of their mark and with five minutes to go, the game was tied up at 4 all. After one of their attacking raids we launched a sortie of our own. I returned the ball into play to the feet of my fullback, from there (and this may be the Hollywood script writer in me, but I swear) it went through every set of feet on our team before being buried in the back of the Kiwi's net. Our confidence now brimming an opportunistic goal poked around an attacking keeper gave us a two goal buffer. Several late raids were defended by my team until a final toe poke on the whistle was smacked away inches from the top left corner of our net. 6-4 WE WON. The pain in my left hand would take minutes to register.

It's just a game, winning doesn't matter, what matters is how you play it...that's not the whole truth. Winning is great. Really. I've coached and played in enough losing teams to know all the platitudes about sportsmanship and losing graciously. I've heard most and used many of them. But we all play to win, and that's because it feels great. When you've done your best and lost, you can hold your head up high. When you've done your best and won, you can shout it to the rooftops, drink from the chalice and soak your hand in the esky full of beer and hope the swelling subsides in time for next weeks game.

Introduction

2009-01-21T03:13:00.000-08:00

I've never been much of a sportsman. Sure I've played many sports over the years from Tennis and Cricket to BMX, a handful of martial arts, even two games of Rugby Union for an U19 Colt team (my ears have never been the same), but I've always seemed to prefer the solitary sports over the team ones. However my current love is Soccer. I know it is football to the purists but as a child who grew up in Queensland in the Seventies football will always be Rugby.

My association with soccer began with my eldest son signing up to play as an Under 6 a few years ago. Attending the first training session I quickly got dragged in to assist with proceedings. Having NEVER played a game of soccer, or even watched an entire game, it was interesting trying to teach children how to play. Suffice to say it was lucky they were only 5.

After four years of this (two years as a coach and two as a manager) I realised that in order to have any chance of passing on some knowledge of the sport...I'd have to acquire some. So it was with some measure of trepidation that I decided to play. The club where my three children play has a healthy Over 35's competition fielding two teams. These teams cater variously to blokes who have never lost their lifelong passion for the game right through to those who just wanted a reason to get out of the house and engage in a bit of manly bonding. I placed myself closer to the latter. I wanted to learn about the game and I needed some physical activity in my life. What I didn't realise was how much I would enjoy the "blokiness" of it all.

My soccer career started badly. After an encouraging training session where I actually displayed a reasonable turn of speed and an ability to kick the ball without falling over it, I turned out for our first trial game of the season. Kitted out in new socks and shorts, the appropriate safety equipment and my old baseball boots (did I mention my two seasons of baseball?) I arrived at the grounds full of hope and anxiety. The family had come down to watch, fish and chips and picnic blanket in tow, the kids excited to see the old man finally walking the walk. Twenty minutes into the first half my moment had come and I ran on to take my place somewhere in the front line.

There is nothing as obvious as the tearing of a quad muscle, even to someone who hasn't done it before. Unwilling to admit defeat so prematurely I hobbled about for 20 minutes until half time when I could skulk away to the bar for a bag of ice before sitting on the side lines eating cold chips and watching the second half.

Thus began my close friendship with our local physio, my re-acquaintance with my chiropractor and the seemingly never ending visits to various shamans and soothsayers trying to get my old body to do what my willing mind thought it could.