New Year Blog
I'd like to start my first blog of 2011 with best wishes to everybody for the coming year, hopefully everyone had a really good Christmas.
I had a really good two week break, firstly managing to beat the bad weather and the transport problems and managed 5 nights in sunny Tenerife where temperatures were 25 degrees each day, certainly warmer than the -12 degrees I encountered as I drove down the M4 to Bristol airport for our departure! It was great to get away and relax in the sunshine by the beach or the outdoor pool at our hotel. I'm also grateful my good lady is very understanding as I managed to find a football match to watch, just 5 minutes from our hotel!! It was a Spanish 3rd division game and despite the poor attendance apart from some Brits like me, itching to see some football having not witnessed much back home it was nice to watch a game.
On my return on Christmas Eve we had to acclimatise back to the freezing cold conditions of England, but once home we settled in for Christmas during which we had a good time. Last Thursday the weather had cleared up enough for us to finally play our league cup game with Hungerford for Cirencester where I'm part of the coaching staff so it was good to get back out on the grass and strike some balls at Bully (our keeper at Cirencester). Yesterday on the eve of our game with Swindon Supermarine we had a light snow flurry and it does seem cold again but i'm just praying that the really bad weather has gone so I can concentrate on getting back into my coaching routine.
This week should see me back in after the Christmas break with the goalkeepers at the Centre of Excellence at Swindon and on Monday (10th) it will be the first session back for "Steve Hale Goalkeeping School" so i'm looking forward to that.
With regards the recent "Save for Robbie Appeal" event which took place just before Christmas, I would ask that all members who took part collect and bring in their sponsor money to that session so that I can work out the final total at which point I will make an announcement. Initial figures from what I already have in look good so fingers crossed and I will shortly have pictures of the event on the gallery page for people to view.
I currently have for my Monday night sessions 4 spaces available in my younger age group and 2 spaces available in my older age group. If there are any budding goalkeepers out there who would like to improve their goalkeeping techniques please make contact with me as soon as possible to reserve a place.