From The Touchline: Rainy Days

It was absolutely pouring down at the weekend – not ideal for our possession based game. To make matters worse we played a team of big, fast – I guess early maturing – oldest players in their year group who like to smash the ball up front and chase it knocking my players over in their haste to get a shot on goal. For the first 10 minutes my midfield looked like they were watching a tennis match as my keeper cleared the shots raining down on his goal.

A couple of wrestling matches later and a quizzical look at the referee saw us 2-0 down in those early exchanges. I don't think we got over the half way line. But soaking wet, ears ringing from the shouting from our noisy hosts we began to play our normal game and started to pick off the opposition – who didn't veer from their long ball 'hit 'em on the break' style.

At half time my drenched players wanted to hit like with like and bombard our opponents, but we discussed it and agreed we had been the better team for the 15 minutes up to half time and 2-0 was a scoreline that we could get back.

And on we go, carving our opponents up time after time. We should have scored three or four goals in the second half as suddenly the sun was out and the players got to grips with the slippery surface. The game though had become exciting – well for us it was, as our opponent coach applauded every last gasp clearance by his weary foot soldiers.

In the league tables it goes down as a loss and ruins our winning record but of all the games we have played so far this season it was the one I enjoyed most. To go from being bombarded with long balls to overcoming and slowly taking over the game was most satisfying.

From that first 10 minutes my players learned so much about battling to stay in games, having to adapt when the midfield is bypassed with long balls and keeping playing the style that they are used to despite the thoughts in their own heads that a long ball game might suit the conditions better.