Kennedy Cup 2011 - Day 1

Kennedy Cup Blog – Day 1

After several months’ preparation, including a short tour of Belgium, the day has arrived.  All the work that has gone into this group of players has all been geared towards this day.  The Kennedy Cup is here!

We met at the Red Cow Hotel on Dublin’s Naas Road at 9.30am for the bus journey to Limerick.  Everybody was in good spirits ahead of the 3 hour trip South.  We got the bus loaded with our gear, took our seats and we were soon on the road.

The first hitch came ten minutes into the journey when we went to put the DVD player on to kill some time and entertain the troops.  The driver was struggling so I took over.  He handed me the remote control and I attempted to get the disc working. After five minutes trying I opened up the remote and the batteries were missing!! D’OH!  Cue laughter and much slagging of this physio!

The driver went on to tell us that the last driver on the bus was from Poland and he had switched the language on the Sat-Nav to Polish and nobody could work out how to change it back to English.  This gave us great faith in him!  Again, though, much laughter.  This is going to be a long week.

The kids settled down at the tabled seats to the rear of the bus and the card schools commenced.  I’m not sure who it was but I know for a fact there was much cheating going on down there.  It seems we have some sharks in the group.  I’ll investigate this further later in the week.

We arrived at the Kilmurry Lodge hotel for our lunch at 12.30pm and we settled down to a pre-match meal of spaghetti bolognese.  Of course, there was the usual suspect who doesn’t eat this particular pasta dish so we sorted him out with a meal from the carvery.  The most important thing with kids is that they eat.

So with full tummies we boarded our bus to take the five minute journey to our base at the University of Limerick, which is where all the accommodation, as well as the playing pitches, are.  The players settled into their rooms while the technical staff held a meeting.  At this meeting, we discussed the arrangements for the rest of the day and put the meat on the bones of our itinerary.  We re-arranged our own accommodation so that we could hold all team meetings for the week here.

Then it came to the first match of the tournament.  This game was to be against the Cavan/Monaghan schoolboy league and had a 7.00pm kick-off.  The players collected their kit from the kit manager and got changed.  They then reported for their pre-match briefing at 5.45pm.  Once John, our manager and Declan, our assistant manager went through their team-talk and notes on our shape on the tactics board, we were set to go.

We took the short walk to our pitch at 6.15pm and immediately commenced our warm-up routine.  As per usual, we were the star attraction of the day and large and very partisan crowd turned up to the match.  They were there for one thing, and one thing only: To see Dublin lose!  Well, they went home disappointed as our boys put in a very professional performance and scored a goal in each half to start us off with a 2-0 win.

So, warm-down routine completed, we made our way back to our accommodation where the players showered as we waited for our pizza supper to be delivered.  As I treated players for slight knocks, we had the Shamrock Rovers v Derry City match streaming live from Tallaght Stadium on a laptop courtesy of the fantastic SRTV.

Once the pizzas had been devoured, it was time to get the players in for their post-match de-brief and to be issued with their instructions for tomorrow morning.  With 2 matches to be played tomorrow it is going to be one hell of a long day.  We play at 10.30am and again at 5.00pm in the final group games.  It’s days like tomorrow that you fully utilise your 20-player squad.

Well that’s it for day one.  I’ll be up and at them again at 7.30am tomorrow with 2 players booked in for early treatments.  With spare time in short supply tomorrow I may not get to do a Tuesday update but I’ll certainly try.  Right now, this very tired physio is off to bed. 

Good Luck!