Tuesday 26 February 2013

With what Remains

Apologies apologies, profuse apologies for the absence of a blog for a while. No, the season has not ground to a halt, rather a combination of busyness, illness, and exhaustion has combined into a lethal cocktail of anti-blogness. Luckily for us all I believe I have now passed through the worst of that, but it leaves me with many things to cover and perhaps not the wit or vocabulary to do it all justice, I'll give it a go though.

Well, we may as well be blunt, it looks to us as though title aspirations are over for this year, 12 points off the top with 4 games to go tells that story. This has happened as a result of us losing our crunch game against Timperley, very gutting result that. We played well and had them for a time, but let them back in and fell just short again. Since I've last been with you we've also tested our mettle against Colwyn, the leagues other high flyers. A slightly more creditable result of 2-2 there, still a bit disappointed but you can't win them all. The theme when we look back on the crucial moments this year will be that we just fell ever so slightly short, both of obtaining our desire of topping the table and in giving full credit to our abilities. The fact now is that we face a different question from how well we can place in the league (we should be pretty safe of getting 3rd place), but rather what to do with the time we have left this season?

I know, and most of the lads who were around when we went up know, that this is the time where we start preparing to take on the league next season. We do not feel that we've plateaued and we do not feel that we've given it all and everything (well, I don't personally) so now we can look at ourselves and at our league and say, we can be the best team in this league. That's how it was at the end of the season before we won our title and that is how it is now. We CAN be the best team in our league.

How to achieve that?  That relies on individual reactions coming together to create a dominate team mentality, a winning mentality. I'm loathe to say we've lost that winning mentality but the edge is a bit blunted. Perhaps that's the best way to use our time, by honing and sharpening our edge, winning the important battle, the mental battle, in preparation for the physical battle yet to come. For me the physical side of things have begun to take its toll. I've been unable to train for the last few weeks for an amalgamation of dumb, boring, reasons but training is really the first and most crucial step to staying sharp and getting better. It isn't always fun but its value is high. At this stage of the season I find the mind willing but the body wishing for rest, by way of compensation for missing out tonight I decided to work on some sprinting. Where at the start of the season my body reluctantly but eventually acquiesced to heavy fitness work tonight my muscles cried and screamed out in defiance, like a slave in rebellion to his master, I limped aching and wounded home to sulk on my fatigue. Then again, maybe that is just me, never was a great athlete.

Collectively we want to be playing our best come the last game, so they'll be the new benchmark I'll report back on. We need some more work before then, and with some of us banged up and bruised it isn't going to be easy, but then that's half the fun; and with only 4 games left I can say one thing for certain: we'll miss it when we're done.

Song of the week

Well I fancy a bit of a run of wins for the run in, ideally with a level of performance that increase incrementally each week, that'd be a nice way to round off. 12 points from 12 games. To some up this idealised run of wins I'm winding back the clock only a short 5 years when this cheeky little number came out. Yes, it came out 5 years ago. Yes, you are getting old. Sorry. This weeks song of the week is Gnarls Barkley- Run



Teas League

*Update Coming soon*

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