Divisioning - Oliver Boyle
Aug15Written by:
15/08/2011 16:46 
On Sunday morning we got the bus to this place called Apilion Panionios Training Centre which was up in the mountains. It had two grass pitches and 1 astro pitch. We got our gear on but unfortunately I forgot my shin pads - luckily one of the other guys had a spare pair with him. We had a big team talk where Paul, our head coach, said a few words and Gareth was named captain of the team. I was really proud of him and Greg was named 2nd captain.
So everyone of us was proud of the two guys and no matter what or how tired I was, all I had to do was focus on this 15 minute match. After doing our warm-up, we walked out onto the pitch against Denmark who looked like a pretty alright team. Then this was it - here I was in the goals as the Ireland goalkeeper and I had to do my best.
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The whistle blew and the game was on. We were doing ok in the first 5 minutes but then we were making silly passes, gave the ball away and next thing, Denmark were on the ball and from outside our own box one of their players hit a rocket at me. This one was going into the top corner of the goal and out of the blue I made a one handed save. I came crashing down on the ground and I didn’t really know where the ball was. Lucky enough my teammate put the ball out for a corner. From there on I pulled off another good save and was lucky I didn’t get my head kicked off in the middle of it when I was coming down for the ball. |
Then we made a mistake in the back line and the ball got into our box. I went down and it passed right across from me. For me and the guys, it was off-side but it didn’t matter as Denmark went onto score and we lost the match 1-0.
There wasn’t much we could do in that 15 minutes. We could maybe have walked out with a draw but that’s football - anything can happen and all it takes is just 1 chance and the ball is in the back of the net. So we all had a team meeting to sort out a few things and then the next game was against the Greece B team. I was dropped off the team for this one as Paul had to give everyone a chance to play. I didn’t come on till the last 5 minutes but we won that game 1-0 with a goal by Hughie Sweeney. Finally after so many years, he got his 1st goal! So that was our last match of the day and then we were taken back to our hotel. We had some lunch and then we slept for a few hours before heading down for dinner. I was knackered after a very long day with just a few hours sleep the night before.
On Monday morning I was feeling much better after a good night’s sleep and everyone was in good form and ready to do whatever they had to do. Before we came out of the dressing room at the football pitch, some players were picked to be captain for these wee divisioning matches, before Gareth and Greg would take over for the big games in our group. So that day it was me being named as captain and I was shocked as to me I wasn’t there for the captain’s armband! I just wanted to play football. I’m not much of a leader but I stepped up and did my bit like any other Irish player would do and lead the team out onto the pitch where we were playing an Indian team called Bangladesh.
They were not a bad team but in no time we took the lead and scored. Then I came running off my line but stupidly didn’t shout “keeper’s ball” and I ended up hurting me, Adrian and one of their players. I was taken off but I was fine. After that my hand was a bit sore and I had to stay in with a nurse for an hour so they could keep an eye on me as I had hit my head as well
We then played the Greek C team (they had 3 teams in this football tournament) and I got on for the last few minutes. We won 1-0 in that game so we now had two wins with two goals and none let in - a great day all round. We headed back to the hotel and Hughie’s family and Mario’s mum were there to meet us all. It was a nice surprise and great to see friends from home.
We all then headed up to our rooms and chilled out for an hour before coming down for dinner that evening. Afterwards we found out who we would be up against in the Group stages where the winner takes all. We were in group B with Great Britain, Turkey, Australia and India