Tournament blog

All systems go

I spent the Easter weekend with my colleagues at The Royal National College in Hereford for an international Futsal event.

The event was the latest instalment in The FA’s investment into developing Futsal from grass roots through to an elite level. This was definitely top end elite stuff.

Whilst exhausting and challenging, managing the competing nations from England, Finland, Malta and Turkey was also a good test for us ahead of August.

The staff at the College really looked after us and the public turned out in numbers to witness England hammer Malta in their opening game on Good Friday only to lose the final on Saturday with 3 seconds remaining to an inspired Turkey team.

The past few and next few weeks are really busy for the organising team. We have Monday’s draw at Wembley Stadium to look forward to. We are holding the draw in a pitch side room at Wembley and following the draw some of the England Blind players will do a demonstration on the hallowed turf.

I am a bit nervous about the draw – there are only a few ‘bowls’ and ‘balls’ but certainly enough for it to go wrong! I am sure that the England management will hold me responsible if the draw is a tough one. I have reminded them that it’s best to get the tricky games out of the way early in the tournament whilst the players are fresh. Let see’s what Monday brings!

The weekend following the draw we are organising the England v Germany friendly international matches. It will be good to see the team in action and gauge their progress over the past few months. Also most importantly for us it is the one and only dry run that we will get to test our systems ahead of the real thing.

We are also stepping up our volunteer recruitment and begin interviewing people that have applied in the next couple of weeks.

With the onset of spring and lighter evenings the event seems to be drawing ever closer.

Posted by Jon Dutton on 09-04-2010

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