The latest on our Footy tournament

Yesterday was a scorching hot day in Belize, not the ideal climate for a 1pm kick off in the mid day sun at Unitedville, for the next leg of our tournament. Lucas was a lobster at half time, so we had to take drastic precautions in the second half to stop him from burning up in the heat. Fortunately the clouds provided a little bit more cover in the second half giving all of us some relief.

Our game was against a local village team called St Matthews, who had a bunch of young whipersnappers running around biting at our ankles.

We cruised to a comfortable 6-1 victory making us 2 wins from our first 2 games. It was all very professional with the referee insisting everyone wear shin-pads and tuck their shirts in. It made me feel like an 8 year old as the referee kept running around telling us to pull our socks up. And for those players who tried to hoodwink the ref by only wearing 1 shin-pad they ALL got yellow cards. You gotta luv a ref with an ego. Still i can't complain too much. The way things get organised here in Belize its a refreshing change to see someone trying to do his job properly.

Which is more than can be said for our team. Although i don't run the team, me and my friend John provide the vehicles. We need one other car to take the team and of course that didn't materialise. So at 12.45pm we are driving around looking for a new car and about 6 of our players, who had decided to go and play in another tournament. I remember the days when my Dad, Terry used to run the teams in Ashill, Norfolk. He used to get so wound up by the players. Every saturday we would drive around trying to find the last few stragglers to make up an 11. Some would be in bed, some would be in someone elses bed, others would be shopping. We always did it but Dad used to go crazy.

Anyway i have been in Belize too long to get as wound up about it as Dad used to. So i take it all with a pinch of salt.

We found our players in the end, John piled them into the back of his pick up, and we headed off to the match. And Lucas survived the day without burning up, to the relief of myself as Simone would not have been happy to see Lucas suffering from heat stroke when we came home.