All the courses I have been on have been good for many different reasons and aside from the knowledge I have gained they are great for networking and meeting people. On this course in particular is a fellow Centre of Excellence goalkeeping coach, Ben Benson who is at League One club Carlisle Utd. Ben is many years my junior at just 21 but its great to chat over our different experiences and what's great and what constricts there are in our respective roles.
Recently one of my friends, Scotty (Mark Scott) who is a young up coming professional goalkeeper at Swindon hit the headlines with a recent loan spell at Zamaretto league side Swindon Supermarine and in particular their fabulous FA Cup run. Last season I managed to get Scotty sorted with similar loan deals at both Banbury Utd & Chippenham Town in the Zamaretto Premier Division and this year has seen him start the season with Swindon Supermarine. They have had a fanatstic run in the FA Cup culminating in beating Blue Square Premier side Bath City and just recently Blue Square North side Eastwood Town in which Scotty played a starring role. He is currently battling it out with a few other players to win "Player of the Round" on the FA website which is further goods news for him. Its been great experience for him to get regular game time, something which has been hard to come by with Swindon having 4 Professional goalkeepers including Scotty himself and its a shame that his loan spell has ended with him being unable to take his place against Colchester Utd in the next round with Supermarine. However on returning to the County Ground he found that Dave Lucas was injured and Jakub Jesionkowski (one of the other keepers) had also now gone out on loan meaning that Scotty took up the position of back up goalkeeper on the bench to Phil Smith ironically against Colchester Utd last Saturday for their League one encounter. Scotty has helped me out in both a session at my goalkeeping school showing the young goalkeepers the levels required to make it as a "pro" and also he helped me out as an assistant coach on my two day course in the summer and he is not only a good young goalkeeper but a top lad and brilliant with the kids. In fact he still is probably the biggest kid I know!!
Last night I rushed back from the course i'm currently on to help prepare Swindon Town Youth team goalkeeper Leigh Bedwell for our FA Youth Cup tie at the County Ground with Coventry Sphinx. It was brilliant for the lads to get the chance to play on the County Ground in a very important fixture for the team and thankfully we progressed with a 6-1 win to see a trip to Championship side Watford in the next round. It was a tricky test for Leigh on a cold and wet night. Although he didn't have hardly anything to do in terms of actual shot-stopping he had to keep his concentration levels high and deal with a number of back passes and through balls and keep the lads in front of him also focussed.
I was pleased to hear from my better half that my latest batch of "Ultimate Grip" goalkeeping gloves have arrived and will be at home waiting for me to sort through on my return. This batch has seen some improvements made and the colour of the logo changed and I hope to shortly have the new pics downloaded on the shop section of this site.
Anyway, its late now and I have an assesment to complete tomorrow so time to get my head down!