January is always a funny month, after a 2 week break from school over Xmas and a bit of time off football to re-charge, I couldn't wait to get back to it.
FOOTBALL TEAM
Thankfully, my team started training again on January 2nd and had our first game on Jan 5th, so I didn't have to wait too long. Sadly, we haven't performed too well in January. After being unbeaten since 6th October we won 1 but lost our last 3 matches. This shows that you can't win every game and we learn from losing than winning. The important thing for us keepers is to learn to accept that we will concede goals and not to get frustrated during the game. Staying calm is difficult when you feel so responsible playing this position, but don't focus on the scoreline, just your all-round game. At the end of the match, once we've arrived home and any tensions have died down, I give myself a score out of 10 for my performance. This makes me think about the good and the not so good things that I did.
To read my match reports and watch some match highlights CLICK HERE
YOUTUBE VIDEOS
We published 9 videos during January which was a mixture of training, match highlights, a goalie clothing review, 2 glove reviews, a challenge video and my new weekly VLOG series. We had over 370,000 views and gained nearly 1,000 new subscribers. So thank you to my new & old subscribers for your support.
SCHOOL ACTIVITIES
I've taken part in quite a few school sports activities recently. We got through to the Essex Dodgeball Finals and finished 3rd out of over 200 school who originally entered. We also entered into a Swimming Gala amongst local schools. I came 2nd in my individual front-crawl race and our team came 3rd in our medley relay race. I was doing Back-stroke in the last leg but got caught by friend & team-mate Luka who attends another school 😡. Lastly, we also played Dodgeball vs another local school and won 9 matches, drew 1.
We've been having mock Maths SAT tests at school this week too and my results have been great in these, coming joint 1st in one test, 1st in the 2nd test and 1st in the 3rd test. My total score was 105 out of 110, which I'm really pleased with. Next week we have English mock SAT tests which I'm not so good at...
GOALKEEPER ACADEMIES
Over the last few months I've been attending various different goalkeeper training sessions and academies to add a 2nd goalkeeper session to my current Academy session and team training. This has been useful to try different coaches, compare myself to other goalkeepers and get used to the trial situation. You never know when you might be asked to trial for a pro club academy, so you want to be ready and not be nervous of the situation. This has resulted in me being very relaxed at each session, learning and enjoying them. This has resulted in me joining a 2nd Goalkeeper Academy from the start of January - Evolve.pa which I am really enjoying.
To see what my weekly schedule now involves CLICK HERE
GOLF
I've had 1 golf session this month and tomorrow I'm taking part in a 3-hour 9-hole competition which should be fun.
GOALKEEPING KNOWLEDGE
It's important that your parents support you whatever your interests are. My dad played in goal (and still does!) which is great as he understands the pressures of being the last line of defence. He recently attended a Coaching Workshop for parents and coaches, organised by Paul Warnecki of Goalkeeper Warz. The session was run by Tony Parks who was the Spurs Goalkeeper who made the winning penalty save when they won the 1984 UEFA Cup. He's also worked for the English FA developing their youth goalkeepers, coached at Aston Villa, Watford and Tottenham when they had Brad Friedel & Hugo Lloris.
If you're parent wants to attend these monthly Coaching Workshops CLICK HERE
I hope you've enjoyed this BLOG. Thanks for your support,
Henry ⚽️👐🏼