Won Districts and thanks to George!

Right, most of you must have heard by now, Malindi High won the District Championships.  I only made it to the first day where we won our first game against Barani I think 12-5 and our second game against Gede something like 30 – 0.  I missed the third game on the Saturday as I had a prior engagements and can’t imagine what might have happened as we tied Muyeye (yes the team we’ve been trying to train up to standards) 0-0!!!!

The first game against Barani was marvelous, we dominated and played our game, I tried to make a mass substitution just after half time as promised to the players and that killed the flow completely and a normally trusty sweeper made a horrible error and threw the ball to nobody (just launched it backwards) which resulted in a free Barani try but was absolutely not indicative of any real possession by Barani.  In the second game we crushed Gede which was the only team I was really nervous about as they were big and had beaten us in 15s (through a fluke!). I was pretty happy, the fitness training had given us results and the only small issues were some tackling and some blind passes which I’ve been trying to coach out of the players since the beginning of the season.

Now it’s off to Counties!  We’re worried as usual about Galana and St Georges, but I think we should be able to beat one of the two of them, and I believe two teams will represent the county.  Again, I still have question marks about the commitment of this team.  Our physical preparation although improved is poor compared to past years, not to mention the mental commitment and the commitment to physicality and tackling.  Having said that, I do think that they have the talent to win the provincials again… but we’ll have to see. 

George pushing the young ones to work their butts off!  Some serious squats here!

I’d like to also take the opportunity to thank George for coming out with his brother Paolo yesterday.  We were training the junior kids (as the seniors were shipped off to kaloleni for the counties) and the two of them set up a pretty rigorous physical training session.  I hope we can make it a regular occurrence and it seems like the boys appreciated it quite a lot.  It’s always good to have someone else push them and motivate them and I hope having a pair of extremely fit role models might encourage them to work hard!!! J  Wish us luck at the counties!