Proud Dad Day

"The Huffty" has been practising his football skills on a Saturday morning for a little over two years.  For the last couple of months he has been getting ready to play his first competitive game in the Little League and the team also features plenty of his mates.

The team is run by Notoplip, who ended his playing days at his local team and subsequently managed them.  In fact if you were to open up Notoplip you would probably find a football inside there somewhere.  I've known him for close on twenty years and football has always been close to his heart.  No surprises then that his son, Sonic is a pivotal member of the team.

I have connections with the club as well.  As I have mentioned before, I have been on several of the end of season "football tours" despite not having kicked a ball in anger since I was at junior school.  The fact that I know plenty of the people at the club from my socialising and Kitten knows lots of the mums and dads from The Hufftys team makes the whole experience very easy going.

It was great watching the kids play their first match and there was almost as much pleasure for me in watching Notoplip pace up and down barking instruction looking closer to heart failure than after a night out with the boys and a large donor in hand.

For me it was hard work just standing there, but worth the effort.

Everyone showed up and Boogle's ice-skating was postponed until this afternoon so that Kitten could come too.

The boys looked like they would get slaughtered to start with but Notoplip got them together at half-time and sorted them out.  At this stage there is an overriding sense that the kids should just have fun, but you also don't want them to take a beating on their first outing because their confidence is fragile.

Anyway, whilst they were  considerably smaller than the other team they were fitter and that shone through in the second half.  Eventually it also paid dividends with a superb free-kick equaliser from "The Tank".

It's not my intention to turn my blog in a match day report of my son's football but, as it was their first game, it was good to see all those cold Saturday winter mornings producing an end result.

Everyone left with a smile on their face.