Bye bye 7 a side

Well last night saw the end of the social 7 a side comp I've been running a team in. Quite enjoyable in the last few games but I did find it a bit hard early on to get into it and enjoy it.

Chatting to a few of the boys last night and it is amazing how important that cliched "Match fitness" is. The first few games I struggled to recover from little darts around the field. Towards the end I was recovering faster and still running at the end of the game. I found that in the latter half of the proper season this year too. Match fitness is not just a myth.

Now I get to look forward to the long few months ahead before any footy is available to play or watch. Sure pre-season will start about the 11th January or something like that but our first matches, even of the practice variety, won't be for a month or more after that. So what to do in the meantime?

I guess I'll continue to attend the voluntary training on Tuesday nights, but that ends next week. I'll then have to try and go for a bit of a run and keep up some level of push ups/sit ups etc in the meantime to tide me over until pre-season. And then the pain begins.

Still at a much improved level of fitness from last year so here's hoping that a full pre-season awaits and it knocks me into even better shape before the matches begin. And then here's hoping that match fitness kicks in sometime quickly after that and I can get cracking on playing good footy.