An up and down weekend

An up and down weekend for myself but a great week for Castleview! Well the weekend started with me looking at the league table thinking if Everton beat West Brom and Liverpool lose we could be ahead of the old enemy on sunday evening! When Everton duly delivered with a clinical 2-0 victory over the baggies we were half way there. Some strange results followed on saturday with Arsenal losing to London rivals QPR and City drawing with Sunderland. I think we will have a few more upsets before now and the end of the season, especially with 5-6 teams in the relegation battle.

Sunday morning was a beautiful morning, the kind of morning you want to wake to when you know you have a match, but sadly we lost to what seem to be our bogie team this season Tramore Ath. On the plus side it was a cup match so no ground lost on our league rivals! The pitch was horrible, it was rock hard, it seemed like it was about 10 yards across and the bobble didn’t help anybody but then again Tramore had to play on it aswell! But fair play they are through to the next round and I wish them all the best. 

I managed to catch the second half of the Liverpool game yesterday and it wasn’t the best match, terrible football and loads of mistakes. Newcastle deserved their win and seem to be very good value for money in the league this season, but what is going on with Liverpool? Do they need a change? Do Liverpool fans consider this a good season? Are they at the level they should consider their norm now? I don’t think so, they are still in the top 3 big clubs in English football. They should be top 3 in the league every season, but do they have to make fundamental changes to their ethos to move forward again as a club!

This week Castleview AFC’s under 19’s won the Premier League by a massive 9 points, this truly shows that if you focus on the youth you will get huge benefits in the future, I’ve seen first hand this season when a few of the lads were called to play for the Seniors and slot into the team perfectly. They are on for the treble this season after winning 1 cup and in the semi final of another. I look forward to the coming seasons to see this young guys mature into great senior players. Well done to everybody involved in the Under 19’s.

Dean

AUL Predictions

Well not many movers over this weekend's fixtures, Six-Yard-Box tried to pull away but to no avail.

Who can gather momentum with 2 lots of fixtures over the next week?

six-yard-box 40

Skippy 39

Innishvilla 38

Radiostar 36

Douglas Local 34

donaldihno 31

sharpshooter 28

footiefanatic 27

Horse24 27

the Owl 25

Thebooboys 24

Oldlegs 23

Bluey 19

offside rule 15

http://foot.ie/threads/162071-Cork-AUL-Predictions-2011-12/page8

Thank you

WOW lads, 1000+ views in just over a week! Thank you all! I do appreciate it, I'll keep them coming! Dean

AUL predictions

Over the past few days the Cork AUL Predictions have been coming think and fast,

Check it out on foot.ie

http://foot.ie/threads/162071-Cork-AUL-Predictions-2011-12/page8

“I believe the children are our future...”

Randy Watson once sang “I believe the children are our future...” or was that Whitney Houston? Whoever it was they were spot on, if you look around the city and county, or even across the water, clubs need to have a line coming through the club and feeding the “Top” team in the club. Manchester United, Arsenal, Everton, Liverpool they all have players playing first team that came through the youth system. Clubs need this, if they don’t they need a rich Russian or Arab at the other end to buys players. League One and League Two teams need their youth system to produce at least one player a season that they can sell to a bigger club just so they can survive. I’m sure the lower league teams would love to keep onto their players but they just have to sell.

In the Premier the Elite Player Performance Plan was introduced last year to develop a long term strategy for player development, they have six main points:

·    Increase the number and quality of Home Grown Players gaining professional contracts in the clubs and playing first-team football at the highest level
·    Create more time for players to play and be coached
·    Improve coaching provision
·    Implement a system of effective measurement and quality assurance
·    Positively influence strategic investment into the Academy System, demonstrating value for money
·    Seek to implement significant gains in every aspect of player development

These six fundamentals are helped by four main points:

·    Coaching
·    Classification
·    Compensation
·    Education

Altogether these points go hand in hand, but over here we cannot live by these because of  the nature of the amateur sport, but we can cherry pick or choose which points we can use and implement these in our own clubs through academies or our schoolboy/girl section. The main EPPP areas we can use:

·    Allowing clubs to have more coaching time with their young players
·    Helping clubs foster links with local schools in order to help young players get the best out of their football education as well as the academic side
·    Allowing clubs that have earned a top category grading to recruit young talent from further afield than is permitted under the current rules

If clubs implement an academy or train their coaches properly then in the long term we will see huge benefits within the clubs and players, with Castleview you can see this, fantastic youth policy. At least 4 players are regulars with the senior team and more are coming through with our under 19’s recently winning the premier league at their age level. 

So if we pick our own strategy using the EPPP points we can see this:

·    Create more time for players to play and be coached

·    Improve coaching provision

·    Implement a system of effective measurement and quality assurance

If we can hit these goals, the class of player coming through youth systems will be enormous, along with the FAI who are trying to get as many volunteers qualified in coaching we will have alot more coaches within the clubs that will be coaching players properly rather than a run around and a kick about, then players will start to enjoy football even more. 

Who knows, in 10-15 years time we could have a Wayne Rooney or Steven Gerrard on our hands, only time will tell!

Dean

Smells like...tiger balm?

I don’t know about you, but match day be it AUL 3A or Munster Senior League playing the big boys, you gotta love it! Getting up early on a sunday morning, having a hastily prepared pre-match meal of toast or something stupid that you heard that gives you enough energy for 90 minutes! It’s fantastic, just to be part of the team, entering the room full of guys either still asleep or going a mile a minute from their Redbull or Lucozade. Throwing your gear bag up on the bench rubbing your hands together and a quick walk around the pitch and maybe a chat about yesterday’s results. 

Then it’s time to get ready, banter flying around the dressing, it could range from guys talking about each other’s sisters to some guy’s “football’ jocks! The smell of tiger balm or deep heat starts to fill the air, time for people to dull the pain of the old ‘war’ wounds, then it comes to the team talk. The old dog from last century telling the young pups how to play, what way to take a corner even though he couldn’t cross his legs, how to kick the opposition! One last push towards the door, “Get out there and get at them, hit him to make sure he knows you’re there!”

Well the match finishes, either joy or sadness now fills the dressing room instead of the player’s local anesthetic. Did we win? Did we hit him to make sure he knew we were there? Was the old dog right, did we do him proud? Did we do the mud stained jersey proud? Hopefully! As we gather around to say who will and who won’t be at training next week or remember a part of a match when somebody kicked the ground and blamed the pitch or the goalkeeper that talks a great game but Stevie Wonder would pull off better saves! It’s at this moment that the team spirit is highest! This is one of the greatest feelings ever, it’s as simple as that, i’m sure every sport is like this but no sport is like football! 

The greatest sport ever!

Dean

What a beautiful weekend!

Well what a weekend! Everton become only the third team this season to beat Swansea at the Liberty Stadium with a lovely 2-0 win, Castleview complete a league double over UCC with a 1-0 win out in The Farm and me old flame Wycombe grab a late draw against MK dons.

After watching the Everton match a new confidence grew in me for tuesday night’s replay against Sunderland, now I know Sunderland beat QPR and the Stadium of light isn’t an easy place to go, but after watching Everton outplay the best passing team in the premier league at the moment I knew David Moyes gave his players his own version of the ‘hairdryer’ after the midweek game against Arsenal. I watched the game and thought Leighton Baines hasn’t been the same all season, his corners aren’t deadly anymore but with Pienaar in front of him the old partnership is blossoming once again and his freekick was nothing short of perfect. So I look forward to tomorrow night and hopefully a date with the enemy at Wembley.

I didn’t make it to the Castleview UCC game on Saturday but the lads came away with a fantastic result and puts us right back in with a shout of promotion to the Premier league and gives us great confidence going into the cup this weekend!

So over this week, I’m going to try and put a piece together on Messi and his career so far, so stay tuned!

Dean