Another night, another training session and the coaches remarked that we were getting better at our possession of the ball and learning to relax and be comfortable on the ball.
We did have a female footballer join us for training and it did spark some thoughts about gender equality while we were playing. It was triggered when she made one bad pass after another and was clearly unable to stop the ball, let alone play it along (the one time she did, she passed it straight to the opposition). A "wtf are you doing" statement was met with "but she's a girl!" from a teammate, and i realised that true gender equality had kicked in for me because i saw her as a football player rather than the weaker sex. I have played with girls who are good at soccer, and it is all basic stuff, as we should be doing, that they did well: passing, stopping the ball, passing (again), running into space, tracking the opponent with ball, etc. This particular specimen instead chose to hide behind the "I'm a girl you know" argument and refuse to acknowledge her failings on the pitch which garners no respect or sympathy from yours truly. Was made to play right back which was a tiring job, especially if one chooses to join in the attack by overlapping and playing people into space, but it was fun. More interestingly, J scored a beauty of a goal, rocketing the ball into the top right hand corner while in full stride, classic J. =)
