Wednesday 31st August sees the first of our regular training sessions this season at the Southgate Hockey Centre (Floodlit Astroturf). 9.00-10.00.p.m. (same as last season...until an 8.00-9.00.p.m. vacancy arises).
However, the SHC have now gone and arranged three extra 7-a-side Plate League matches, which means we will be playing 7-a-side on Thursday 1st September in addition to training the night before.

Other Management Committee members think I should cancel training on the Wednesday just because nobody turned up to Pre-Season Training, but I disagree.
The Pre-Season Training sessions were at 7.00.p.m. and that is what caused most of the problems as players could not get off work in time. Also, both my e-mail address and mobile phone were not working properly at the time, and numerous players have since told me they didn't know that training was on because of that.

I make it that we have at least 25 players who want to attend training on Wednesday 31st August. These are as follows:
Tem Adil
Dean Assiamah
Alan Barnard
Tim Beeden
Colin Bester
Daniel Cascoe
Martin Cruickshank
Daniel Daley
Danny Hagan
Lexton Harrison
Simon Jackson
Ben Keating
Lee King
Tony King
Ricky Kyagaba
Yianni Kyriacou
Ryan Lobban
Martin Loveday
Terry Moore
John Scouller
& 5 ex-McKenzie Rangers players
That list does not include Olie Tedder, Kizza, Terry Brown, Martin Worthington, myself and several other mates of current players who want to attend. They might also be available. I am also turning down numerous players who phone up wanting to join us but who do not know any of our current players.

In my opinion we can easily pick our best 8 players for the 7-a-side game on the Thursday and still have 14 or more for training the night before.
If any of the players I have listed above are definitely not around on the 31st August/1st September, please let me know asap.
Obviously if it then starts looking like we will struggle, then I will call training off.

I would like to think that with this being our last training session/7-a-side match before our first League game of the season (on Sunday 4th September), all players will be dead keen to turn up, make sure they pay their £30.00 Annual Subs and prove to Trevor that they should be in the starting line-up/squad.

I have now cancelled this training session and we will now start on Wednesday 7th September instead.

That's because we screwed up against Enfield Bears last night, meaning we now have to win that match on Thursday 1st September instead of giving 'anybody' a run-out and treating training the night before as more important.
We also have a lot of those 25-plus players going down with injuries or changing their mind about signing up/playing this season.