RAIN UNITED
FOOTBALL CLUB
[Maintaining Training Standards]
While I applaud the friends who had come by to our weekly Saturday soccer sessions with vast improvements on our overall friendly approached towards the game, in mitigating time loss for those who may not be able to turn up punctually and with the overwhelming responses that we have had each week, I will proceed to regulate our warm-ups punctually without waiting for the rest, follow-up with playing the 11 a-side immediately.
The intentions is to give the consistent regular team players more playing time to play together as a team to inculcate better teamwork and technical discipline. We would thus discuss and rectify the areas of weaknesses to work on after each match. This I hope can help us to inject more strengths into building the team as well as to be ready prepare for friendly matches.
As for the younger kids, I may organise an earlier time slot for them to train as well. These would also give the boys a fair bit of time to play football among their own age-group and to train well in preparations for their tournaments. The junior boys have led good exemplary with their good discipline and teamwork since they started. They have been cultivated to understand the importance of doing good warm-ups before play and have shown good abilities in exercising their own initiative to conduct their own warm-up as a team. This have brought them far in 2 tournaments that they have participated in and I am positive that they can only get better.
The junior boys have been playing together as a team with no "star" status in them. They have been a very discipline lot. They are aware of discipline issues like vulgarities, rough tackles, sitting in the middle of field, racism, good gamesmanship, being respectful, etc...........and they are only under 10 years of age. They have never once been heard blaming fellow players when they are losing. It has been a joy and I am thankful to their supportive parents who understands what football and its education is all about.
Having gone through good lessons learnt from the Old Boys' Association match, the Rain United players who had played in that game had shown good fighting spirits. What we found lacking were the team co-ordinations, fitness, cohesion and technical discipline (not playing according to instructions). I hope to give the OBA team a better match in November.
The same team of players will remain as long as they tell themselves that they would want to and are eager to prove they can play and train as a team. Likewise, new players will be blend in if they are seen to exercise the same interest. There are no guarantee slots. Rain United hope to have a good mixed balance of both youths and veterans for the matches that will be arranged.
Nevertheless, last Saturday, it was nice to welcome Max back from his overseas holidays and Shaun, who had gone on 3 months absence. Both players appeared to have lost a bit of their football touch but I was glad that they were here for being themselves. During the next couple of weeks, I will put the set of consistent players in one team and will go through trials and errors to put together the first team for the forthcoming friendlies. Randy, who had had the privileged of man-marked the inspiration Leong Kok Fann in the OBA game again has to prove his worth in his fitness and speed. He was being mesmerized by Kok Fann's football abilities throughout that game. In my opinion, I hope Randy would take it as an honour and not horror to learn from it. I have also invited Mr Chua (Randy's dad) to come by and give the son the "push".
To sum it up, it was also nice that I have some veterans who had came forward with serious views and suggestions to discuss how we can take the team one step forward with the right players and commitments to stipulate Rain United. Apart from their busy work schedules, they have made sacrafices to arrange meetings. I certainly hope we can continue to promote more goodwill through integrated voices.