Internet access proved to be difficult from our hotel so I couldn’t provide the ‘as it happens’ updates from the Denmark trip as I wanted to.

The following is a brief summary.

Sunday

Met up with travelling companions at the airport at a ridiculously early hour for a Sunday morning, 04:15 !!

Flew Aberdeen – Amsterdam, Amsterdam – Copenhagen, then took a 5 1/2 hour train journey from Copenhagen north to Aalborg.  

Tip : If undertaking a long train journey it is a good idea to book seats.  The enforced moves that happened en route did help to break up the journey though, and provided a source of humour as we waited to see who got ‘bumped’ next. 

Met on arrival, taken to hotel, then out for Dinner.

The venue for our welcome dinner was Restaurant Costa.  A Greek restaurant run be a very shy retiring gentleman who made it his personal mission to keep us entertained all night, telling jokes and singing songs – including one self penned (I hope) number that managed to rhyme “plectrum” with “rectum”.

Post prandial beers were taken in “The Street” before retiring.

Monday

Visit to Lindholm Hoje, Viking burial site before a guided tour of the city centre.  

At the end of the tour one of the lads got himself a nickname for life when he asked the question: “I see a lot of the buildings have on them the word Anno and a date.  Who was Anno?”.  From that moment on there was only one Anno…

Afternoon visits to Sports School and Community Sports Centre followed by tour of Energi Nord Arena and chance to observe Scotland U21 training session.

Dinner plus post prandial drinks in “The Street”.

Tuesday

All day visit to Aalborg Freja community football club – very impressive facilities and set up and extremely nice people.

Dinner at Energi Nord Arena followed by Denmark v Scotland U21 game.  Sadly Scotland lost but as the only 13 Scotland fans in the place we made sure we were heard.  We even got joined by an ex-pat from Dumbarton who helped swell our numbers to 14!

Post prandial drinks in “The Street” (a theme developing here?) where the kilted member of our party found himself the subject of much female attention.

Wednesday

To the Mayor’s office for a talk with some chap about Coach Education.  He only turns out to be the Technical Director of the DBU (Danish FA).  Fantastic.  Lunch then presentation on how the Aalborg Sports Union operates.  Main source of income was running TV Bingo!

Afternoon, wander round city.

Evening, dinner then off to watch the Scotland game.  Luckily we had tracked down an Irish bar, managed by a Scot, which was showing the game.

Victory for Scotland, a few beers, plus a last minute victory for Denmark made for a happy mood in the camp.

Post prandial drinks in “The Street”.  The kilt was on display once more.

Thursday

Early start a bit of a nightmare after last night’s celebrations.

Out to AaB’s training ground to watch elite kids being coached before going to school, followed by a visit to AaB College.

Visit to Gigantium, a huge sports complex with a huge sports hall, currently configured as a hand ball arena, conference facilities, gyms, and two ice rinks – one for ice hockey games and one for training and curling.

Evening, back to Aalborg Freja to watch training sessions – women and lower division.

Dinner in town.  Post prandial… you know the score. Kilt on show again…

Friday

Back out to AaB training ground.  Presentation on club finances followed by watching the first team squad training.

Chat with Bruce Rioch about life as a football manager in Denmark compared to U.K., EUFA Champions League, etc.  

Signed autographs for a group of Danish schoolkids who refused to believe that we weren’t famous in some way…

Evening, back to our friends at Aalborg Freja to watch the 2nd team match.  Distribution of nips of Highland Park whisky to members of the watching crowd helped cement international relations!

Dinner, post prandial, kilt…

Saturday

The return journey.

Tip : If you are an airline pilot and you are in the middle of making your standard “we are approaching Amsterdam airport yada yada yada” speech when the plane suddenly drops and veers to one side,  please please please do not squeal “My goodness what is happening here!”  It tends to make people a trifle nervous. 

Everyone back to Aberdeen safe and sound and wishing each other all the best before heading off to respective homes, hotels, etc.

A great trip which gave everyone a lot to think about.  What aspects of the Danish system could we take back and apply in our own clubs etc.  A lot of fun had as well, the whole group gelled well and there were a lot of good characters on the trip.  

Met a few football faces along the way : Bruce Rioch (lovely fella), Morten Weighorst (lovely fella), Peter Schmeichel (arrogant grump).

Just a quick note to check in and say that there are some posts in the old mental pipeline that should be working their way through to here shortly.

These will include :

• first game of the season
• trip to Aalborg
• coach in service session with Neil Simpson, Aberdeen (happening tonight)

Had a reasonable trip up to Aalborg in North Jutland in Denmark.

The five hour plus train journey from Copenhagen was a bit tedious but we all survived.

Had a good look round the town this morning. Very pleasant wee place that I’m sure the Celtic fans will enjoy visiting.

This afternoon wee visited a Sports School, a community Sports Centre, then on to Aalborg’s stadium. After the stadium tour we stayed on to watch the Scotland U21 squad training before their game against Denmark tomorrow.

So far so good.

The boys play a friendly game tomorrow but unfortunately I am going to miss it.

We have lined up a game against a team of a similar standard to ourselves to let the boys get rid of some of their summer rustiness before the season proper starts next week.  It also gives us a chance to try out some new players to see how they fit in with the existing squad.

I will not be present however as I am off to Denmark with a group of fellow coaches on an SFA trip to find out about grassroots football in another country.  We will be based in Aalborg, where Bruce Rioch is manager of Aab, and taking in the U21’s game between Denmark and Scotland as well is visiting a number of community football initiatives.

I am really looking forward to the trip and hoping to pick up some new ideas.

Will try and post info on the trip as it progresses.

We have had a couple of boys down for trials over the last couple of weeks due to squad shortages in both our teams.

On the first training night one lad looked streets ahead of the other one who was very introverted and seemed to have difficulty understanding basic instructions.  We put this down to nerves and decided to see how they did the following week.

Second training night and the gap definitely closed a bit.  The first lad is still confident, good with the ball and picks up the training drills easily.  The second lad is still a bit quiet but has started to come out of his shell, picked up the drills a lot quicker and showed some nice touches.

The main change came in the small sided games at the end of the session.  The confident lad just wants to shoot when he gets the ball whereas the quiet lad is getting his head up and looking to make a pass.

So, jury still out at the moment.  We have a friendly game arranged this weekend so shall see how they both do then.

What is it with parents ?

You spend the whole season making sure that their kid is ok at training sessions and is getting their fair share of “pitch time” during games. You raise sponsorship monies to ensure that they have training tops, rain jackets, and strips. You chip in your own money to ensure that the players all get a medal to commemorate their efforts over the season.

And what do you get in return ?

Training restarts this week and we eventually had to contact one boy’s mother to get confirmation of the feeling we have had since the previous season ended i.e. the boy isn’t coming back this year.

I don’t want to go into the reasons for this, what annoys me is that the lady in question did not have the common decency to let us know. We have boys on a waiting list to join our team and finding a replacement should not be a problem, however it would have been nice to have had a bit more notice on this front.

There have been plenty of email communications issued to advise people of training sessions, upcoming friendlies etc, so there have been several opportunities to drop a note back or call to say what was happening – or not. It did not happen.

Sometimes this coaching lark feels a little bit like a cheap baby sitting service, and if it wasn’t for the talent and enthusiasm of most of the boys it would be easy to get a bit down about it.

So, we get a few new boys down for trails and see how they get on.

All being well we go into the new season with a full complement of players and a positive attitude restored.

Took the boys to a gala tournament on Sunday. This was the first time they had played together for a couple of months having had a well deserved break over the summer holidays.

I was impressed at how well they played, some of the passing movements were a joy to watch.

The team did really well having won all but one of their games in the league section going into the final game. Sadly, the number of games and the length of the day seemed to catch up with them and they looked very tired as they lost the final match 2-0. This defeat meant they missed out in a place in the semi final by one point.

The boys were understandably a bit down at not progressing further but there were a lot of positives to be taken from the day.

Nearly there now.  After a few weeks without footie things are almost back to normal.

The SFL kicked off on Saturday with new kids on the block Annan Athletic catching Cowdenbeath cold and inflicting an embarrassing defeat on them.  The SPL kicks off this weekend, by which time Rangers’ European campaign may already be history…

It is still a few weeks before the juvenile football gets underway for the new season but things are definitely starting to ratchet up a gear.  Here are just some of the things on the current ToDo list :

• Complete kit audit and order up new shorts/socks etc as required
• Check on players’ availability for upcoming gala tournament (rearranged from earlier this year when a monsoon struck on the original date).  Tournament is only 2 weeks away now.  Might be worth trying to get the boys together beforehand for a quick training session to knock the cobwebs off.
• Arrange some pre-season friendly games.  One set up at the moment, could do with a couple more.
• Sort out squads for coming season.  Any players moving on ? Room to take on new players from waiting list?
• Training nights.  Agree format.  Agree themes and devise drills accordingly.
• Personal training kit.  Order up new training tops etc.
• Coaching resources.  Transcribe scribbled notes from coaching conference into proper session plans (should have done this ages ago…), read new coaching books that have just ordered.
• Forward planning.  The season after the impending one sees us move to the 11-a-side game, need to agree how we are going to transition from two 7-a-side teams to (presumably) one 11-a-side squad.
• Prepare the paperwork for the new season: membership forms, consent forms, etc.

I still have a feeling that I am going to be a couple of players down when we resume training, we shall have to see…

I was really sickened to read the following story on the BBC news site the other day.

Two charged with football racism

Two people have been charged over the alleged racial abuse of youths at Aberdeen’s International Football Festival, BBC Scotland has learned.

Police were called to Seaton Park on Tuesday following a complaint from officials of one of the teams.

A 41-year-old woman and a 35-year-old man are expected to appear at the city’s sheriff court on Wednesday, charged with breach of the peace.

The event has a zero tolerance approach to allegations of racial abuse.

Racism has no place in football and what makes this even more galling is the fact that the football festival is for 14 and 16 year old boys teams and girls teams and has attracted entrants from South Africa, France, Germany and The Faroe Isles.

I have been down to watch some of the games and some of the football on show has been magnificent.

In the U16’s competition the French team Clermond Ferrand have been an absolute joy to watch. Their players all have a good first touch, are comfortable on the ball and show good vision and quick decisive passing. They look to have a couple of outstanding talents in their ranks and have rightly made it through to Saturday’s final.

Let’s hope that the type of incident reported above does not spoil any player’s memories of what looks to have been a good, well contested, competition.

Just back from a nice relaxing mini break in Barcelona where I was struck by the public football facilities that were readily available there.

As we were staying quite far out from the city centre we did a lot of travelling on the fantastic tram and metro network. Whilst on the tram I noticed that we passed a number of publicly available astroturf football facilities which seemed to be well used. There was one such facility directly beside our tram stop and whilst waiting for our transport one morning I took the time to watch a busy session that a number of coaches were running for a gaggle of schoolkids.

When you compare this to some of the stories I have heard about the lack of decent facilities for juvenile football teams in this country it puts things into perspective. I recently heard one coach describe how his team are forced to train in an area used as a car park and how he even had to resort to doing circuit training inside a changing room when the training area was too rutted ! All the while he was being denied access to a proper playing surface by an over enthusiastic “parkie” who was concerned that the boys might churn up the surface. The parkie only felt empowered to do this as he was stopping an organised team, if they were just a bunch of lads going for a kick about he would let them play in peace. What a crazy mixed up world…

Without doubt a key factor in the use of these facilities is also the more predictable, and pleasant, climate in Spain. Knowing that the weather is likely to be good must encourage people to get out and use the pitches which being astro will be available year round. Contrast that will our own experiences of unpredictable overhead and underfoot conditions, with torrential rain, howling winds and pitches that are invariably either rock hard or mudbaths waiting to develop.

With all these facilities presenting opportunities to play and learn the beautiful game from a young age is it any wonder that Spain are producing such good young football stars at the moment?

However, the work at the grassroots end of Scottish football continues no matter what facilities and weather hurdles arise. There are plenty of good initiatives coming via the SFA and the SYFA and there look to be a number of good young players coming through the ranks, let’s hope this has a positive impact on the senior game in the fullness of time.