F.C. SE7EN 10-25 BLUES BROS FC - 03.12.20

Well, we are back......again! Nothing beats the feeling of playing footy with friends. Not so much when we lose, granted, rollercoaster ride of emotions that it is. All aboard the FC7 Express, choo choo.

Wake up call indeed. But if we want to be honest, everyone was coming back from a 4 week break due England's 2nd full lockdown, so some excuses there.

We went behind early, never clawed it back, and our opponents turned the screw and made it an easy victory for themselves in the end. We learnt a lot from this game. Player for player and individual matchup-wise we reckon we were equals if not better than our opponents. So it was really drilled home, that 5-a-side is a team sport. Individually we are fairly useful, but as a team, useless.

Our opponents were well organised, played it simple and made their chances count. Mistakes are there to be learnt from, so we need to action this for the next games now.

In bullet points:

• We didn't Man mark in defence

• Lacked movement off the ball

• Individual flair is fine, but there needs to be an end product. Rounding 5 players and giving the ball away isn't good. You might as well give the ball away from the get-go.

• Simple passes going awry

• Chances to shots on target ratio being poor

• Fitness

Quickly, on fitness, the following is true. Man-marking, chasing back, making space, are all dependent on it. But we were guilty of basic errors. This is still early days for the team, so we have to keep that always in mind.

In terms of the match, the bullet points some the game up. Individually we are a decent team, but it counts for nothing against someone who is more organised and delivers the footballing basics. We were pretty much taught an invaluable lesson tonight.

Welcome to Mo, our debutant, who just joined our company. He had a solid first game but admitted how intense it was purely from an aerobic level. Don't worry mate, we were all at the same level 3 months ago. For myself, I managed to cut down on cigarettes by 50-75% during the lockdown while keeping up my power walking and running. And boy did I feel it on the pitch. I was no where near as out of breath and when I did feel a little exhausted, it only took me a few minutes to recover. I've learnt that being out of breath, doesn't necessarily mean you are unfit. I believe, I downplayed the effects of smoking. As a result my running and fitness that I had worked on hard during the 1st lockdown was being negated. I've seen the results first-hand, and its motivated me even more.

The real winner here, in a corny way, was football though. The 2nd lockdown has ended. A vaccine has been approved for use and will be rolled out next week in the UK. There is finally light at the end of this long and difficult tunnel. Normality awaits. Till then, we will play hard and continue in our efforts and try to tick off one of our key goals, in upping our numbers. We're edging closer to those mystical numbers of 8 players and the dream of 10 players and having a 5-a-side kickaround amongst ourselves.

On another note, we've made some progress on our new kits. So a bit of background, we released our first ever home kit on the anniversary of Luca's Charity Tournament. It's a tidy kit, and we've already debuted it, but we're looking to join a league soon and charity tournaments so we're working on some ideas for the away uniform. You'll see a post on this soon.

Join us for our next game, Frodo's last game at our company, but rest assured, he's fully contracted to FC7, so won't be going anywhere!

As Jonathan Van Tam says.........OVER (till next week)!