Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to Climb it, Go through it or Walk around it – MICHAEL JORDAN

These are the immortal words of one the most recognisable, successful greatest of all times NBA legend ever to grace the basketball court. This is so relevant in every day life, as I will later demonstrate the inappropriate and disproportionate use of the practicality of this quote, but first the main story..

Today in the Spartan South Midlands Football League D1, Park View FC hosted Winslow United in a must win game to maintain the progress of climbing the division table, but unfortunately our plight came to a knee-jerk car crash halt. Before I get into the narrative, I would point out that preparation for the game was not in harmony with our expectations, and the final scoreline underlined that fact. The source of the self inflicted saga started when four first team players and five reserves turned up for training on Wednesday night (the adverse weather conditions played a key part in the rest of the players not turning up) but for whatever reasons be it legit or a matter of convenience majority of the players didn’t phone in (this particular practice incurs a club fine). I myself didn’t make it for training due to personal fitness reasons and I had to call Clem Anslem (head coach) to notify him. I tried calling the first team goalkeeper Luis Silva about training and the eventuality of my absence, but to no avail.. first sign of the crack. Then came the message the following day about the extremely low personnel attendance for training, which by our standards was unacceptable.. the crack morphing into deep lines. Match day – after a brief meeting between the coaching staff and the players about the extremely low attendance for training and it’s ramifications, some individuals didn’t appreciate the magnitude of the situation by deploying self assessment individually and collectively as a squad. It wasn’t difficult to pinpoint the individual/individuals who by their own admission couldn’t care less.. the deep lines developing into crevices. At that very moment, I knew we had lost the match before we stepped onto the pitch.

On with the game, an within 5 minutes we were a goal down through some very sloppy and static defending. A simple diagonal long ball behind our defensive line was controlled by their right winger, played across the 18 yard line to the left and although our wing back Steve Opoku was body-checked, our players momentarily halted to protest the “foul” to the official, which never came.. 1 – 0. Within the next 5 minutes we conceded another goal, courtesy of a combination of diabolical defending and goalkeeping error. A very soft goal to conceed and the less I talk about this goal the better. Referring back to the above mentioned quote, the obstacles presented to us were

• The match officials
• Our temperament
• Our discipline

These were the analogies of the wall we must negotiate, but we came up extremely short in finding solutions as the story of the match unfolds. Our main problem was calling the referees attention to almost every tackle made against us, and this quite frankly was getting on the nerves of the referee. At some stage of the game he (the referee) made a point of coming towards our dugout to speak to our head coach about his persistent “overt protests” and threatened to take action if it continues. After some hard prep talk between the players, we managed to temporarily “wake-up” and began playing some football which took us to half time with the scoreline 2 – 0 down. It must be noted that the opposition where not by any stretch of the imagination better than us, our mindset was simply off key. After the brief half-time talk, the second half started and after a promising first 10 minutes, we reverted back to our bad habits. Our discipline detoriated as some of the players ignored instructions from the bench, arguments escalated on the pitch and more attention calling and dramatization of the referees decisions, which overall proved destructive to any form of recouping that we were seeking to salvage. At this point, yellow cards where coming out fast and it wasn’t long before our first player (Oltian Klosi) was shown the red after what seem to be a 50/50 challenge. Subsequently we lost any form of discipline and we conceded a penalty to make the game 3 – 0. Soon after we conceded a fourth goal courtesy of somewhat awful (and quite frankly) uninterested skill of goalkeeping. A straight low-ground shot from the opposing striker which should be easy meal for any goalkeeper, was somehow pushed in by Luis. Before I could begin to contemplate for a moment on how he conceded that goal, our substitute Fred Asante got his marching orders just after the restart (a straight red for a bad tackle) and we were reduced to 9 men. Still the drama hadn’t ended, as the head coach Clem Anslem was given his marching orders by the referee moments later for persistent bickering and undermining of the officials authority. I stood there in disbelief all the while witnessing the whole saga which in my humble opinion was self inflicted. As I was pondering on what has just happened, the fifth goal came from another awful goalkeeping. Luis gave away a needless corner kick and from the resulting corner, the opposition headed home.. and that was that, a heavy and embarrassing 5 – 0 home defeat.

I learnt a great deal from this particular experience on the psychological level of human behaviour, both individually and collectively. As I evolve on my path of spiritual consciousness, I’m able to detect the subtle tones of negativity that are destructive and becoming a deciding factor during a course of an event, which a lesser intuned person would grasp. This is testament to the fact that I knew the outcome of the game just by the energetic consciousness of each individual player and the collectively energetic consciousness of the team. It was set up for the defeat and I wasn’t surprised because as the whole drama unfolding on the pitch, I stood back and observed every moment, from the declining of temperament of the team, to questioning every referees decisions, right through to not showing respect to our teammates instructions. We unknowingly set ourselves up for the defeat and we did a dramatic job executing it. Even the away fans (who outnumbered ours by a huge margin) got into the pantomime. On a number of occasions the head coach got caught up in the middle of it, that’s why I wasn’t surprised when he got his marching orders. Before that happened we intended to keep the players on the pitch after the game for extra practice due to the woeful performance but that never happened due to his red card.

I know for certain that if we had deployed the energy that was wasted on contesting the officials decisions and getting into meaningless arguments, into our game and focus, we would have won the game easily and that is the painful truth that has got me shellshocked, hence the quote at the beginning of this article from the legend Michael Jordan. We’ve got 2 more league games before we break up for the Christmas period and it’s a must win to salvage the honour and pride of the team and the club.

We’ve got a lot to learn …

You Are The Ultimate Keeper Of Your Destiny… ULTIMATE KEEPER