Confusion and delight

I'm coaching again. It's not as smooth as I had hoped, but there is a lot of joy.

I’m coaching again. The U15 girls.

This season has not started well. We’ve had some bad losses. Some players have left after a couple of rounds, seeking a higher standard of football elsewhere. It’s difficult to cater to all standards, when the club scrapes together enough players for only one team.

Newtown and the surrounding suburbs are not exactly a hotbed of athletic ambition. Many of the players don’t have backyards. It’s not acceptable to take a football to school and kick it around at lunch. Many attend the local high school: a performing arts school not known for its sporting power. We have players who dream of being drafted to the AFLW, whilst others seem confused as to why they are even there.

And yet, like last season, they keep turning up.

I’ve been struggling to deal with this mismatch of players and ambition. I wanted to aim high. I thought we would improve, with an injection of talent coming up from the U13s. It’s taken three rounds, and an unreasonable amount of anguish, to realise I was not correct.

We have five players who, before those three rounds, had never played football. We are still explaining the rules to them. Those five players are among some of the most keen. Some players are dealing with their own issues, of mental health, of challenges to confidence. We lost our captain of last year to an ACL tear, before the season even started. (She may have fallen off a Lime bike, she may have done it rowing, I am still to receive official confirmation).

Many of the girls who have played for what feels like aeons seem to not be here to improve their football. They’re here - I am guessing - because they get some kind of connection, some kind of enjoyment, something. I don’t honestly know and I should probably stop trying to figure it out. It only frustrates me.

What I have to do is keep turning up with the bag of balls and my whistle and the bibs. I’m a competitive person. Accepting this is not easy. I want more and I don’t understand why some of them don’t see things in the same way, but I can’t deny that they express joy every single week. Perhaps - again - I have to accept that this is enough.

This season Dash - my son - is officially my co-coach. I appreciate having someone who knows football well, respects the girls, believes in female footy and can kick it to the sky when the girls want to challenge themselves. “Can you kick it HIGH Dash?” they say at the end of most sessions. The fearless ones manoeuvre themselves underneath the ball as it gets lost in the lights, and try to mark it. When it hits one of them in the face I worry about teeth and concussion and everything else. “Nah, all good” she calls out, and commands Dash to kick it again.

My nephew (age 12) is our assistant. He carries the water for matches and is general dog’s body at training. He sets up the cones, retrieves balls, stands in for me when I can’t kick and he watches. Everything.

“Does he get paid?” one of the players asked.

“WE don’t get paid, I said, as if I’m going to pay him!”

They can’t quite believe he turns up and does this for no apparent reward.

My nephew started high school this year. He seemed to struggle at first. He didn’t say as much, but was hesitant in his answers when I would ask him how it was going. Like he was thinking about how much he could tell me, or wanted to tell me.

On Wednesdays, all girls teams train. This week I got to the ground early. As the Girls Football Coordinator I like to at least eyeball each of the girls teams and say hi. I’m territorial. I need to see the girls’ teams have space on the field. The U9s didn’t have much on Wednesday. As soon as the U5s finished, I went out and made sure the U9 girls could move into that space, before someone else did. I probably annoy people, but I don’t care. Females have always been pushed to the literal boundaries of football grounds - of all codes - and I want that to change. We need the girls to take up space, to know they can.

My nephew was there early. He was sitting with two of the girls from our team, chatting. They go to the same school. I was some distance away, so I couldn’t hear them (nor did I want to), but I could see that they were all relaxed.

After the session I drive him home. Every time, as we pull out of the car park onto Sydney Park Road, he settles into his seat, left arm on the rest on the passenger door, and says to me: “So, how do you think that went?”

I give him my verdict. He takes his time to think about what he has seen, then: agrees, or disagrees, adds points of interest and makes suggestions. We’ve had a lot to consider.

Like last year, this team confounds and delights me in equal measure. That, I guess, is sport.

The player with the ACL tear regularly comes along to training to watch and support. She often wears her pyjamas and slippers ;-)

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Thank you, as always, for reading.

Georg x

Here’s the link to ‘buy me a coffee’ (make a small, one-off contribution) if you think sometimes I should be paid to write this stuff and you’d like to contribute to my physio fund.