Moving on

As many of you already know I will not be coaching this team next year because instead I will be helping to coach the newly formed under-12 girls team. Next year Dave Merriman will be taking my place and helping Gavin to coach this team.

I just wanted to say thank you to all of you for the great fun I had over the last two years. I was very proud of the great achievements you had in coming from the E division up to the C division. I know that joining the premier league cannot be to far in the future.

SOCAKIDS Summer Academy 2008

SOCAKIDS will be starting a 7 session training program for a period over the Summer to help with the development of players of the club.
The program will cover 7 1 hour sessions and is designed to introduce kids to ideas such as: Playing from the back, Team Shapes (Attacking and Defending), Danger zone, Scoring zone, Bodyshape etc.
The sesions will take place mostly on Saturday mornings in Porterstown for the months of May and June with the final session taking place on Wednesday 26th of June.

This application must be returned to the address on the form before Sat 17th May and copies can be downloaded from www.castleknockceltic.com or www.socaskills.com. It will not be possible to take applications after this date.

Details of course are:
Date: Sat 24/31 May, 7/14/21/28 June and Wednesday 26th June
Venue: Porterstown
Time: 1 hour on Sat morning between 10 and 12 depending on numbers who register + 1 hour Wed 26th June
Closing Registration date: Sat 17th May
Fee: €50

Contact Gavin or Brian if you have any questions regarding this course or have any problems downloading an application form.

Nado wins soccer skills contest

It was beautiful weather for the soccer skills day yesterday. We had a very tightly fought competition, with David O'Connor taking a lead after the cross-bar, penalty-shoot out and dribbling tasks. However, Nado was more accurate on the passing task and hence won the overall trophy. Here you can see him standing beside his mother waiting for the tropy presentation.

I hope you all have a great summer!!!

Schedule for penalty shoot out competition 5th of May

We have been scheduled to take part in the club fund raising penalty shootout competition at 1pm on Bank Holiday Monday (5th of May). This event is normally great fun so I hope most of the team will be able to attend.

For the benefit of anyone who has not been involved in this event before, it will take place on the back pitches in Porterstown. The competition itself will be on the two 11-a-side pitches.

Players only compete against their own team-mates, not against other teams, in four separate events: Crossbar Challenge (as seen on Sky Sports Soccer AM program), Dribbling Slalom, Passing through 'Gates' and a Penalty Shootout. Full instructions will be given before you start and organisers will be on hand to help you throughout the day.

There will also be a variety of Bouncy Castles, inflatable Sumo Suits, Lucky Dip Stall, Chipping (golf) Challenge Stall, Target Shooting (football). Bouncy castles are FREE and the three stalls will sell at 5 tries for 2 euro.

The shop will be open for tea, coffee, minerals etc., and we expect the Order of Malta to provide First Aid if required.

A sad end to our season with a heavy defeat

We started strongly in our last match of the season against Maynooth. We Zhudi and Niamh had several chances to score early on and it was looking like we were going to reverse our recent run of bad results.

Our defense was playing very strongly with Cathal in particular earning our man-of-the-match title. However, Maynooth managed to sneak in two lucky goals against he run of play just before half time.

Going behind seemed to affect our morale and we crumbled in the second half. Maynooth took full advantage and scored four more goals to end the match with a 6-0 victory.

A heavy defeat at the hands of the team likely to win the league

We knew we were facing a tough match against Clontarf because they are strong contenders for the league title and had beaten us 4-0 in a recent match.

It was a lovely sunny day and both sides played great football. We attacked strongly from the kick-off and both Zhudi and our captain Niamh came close to giving us an early lead. However, we were too intent on attacking and left our defence a bit weak. it was Clontarf who went into an early lead when one of their counter-attacks found us with too few defenders in position. It was clearly not our lucky day when shortly afterwards a speculative shot from far out slipped in over the head of our goalie David giving him no chance.

Clontarf gained confidence from this early lead and they continued to pile on the pressure for the rest of the half. However, our defence was solidly lead by Dylan our man-of-the-match. and Clontarf were not able to put any more scores on the board in the first half.

The second half got underway with both sides attacking strongly and both sides had plenty of scoring chances. However, it was Clontarf's lucky day and they managed to sneak in two more goals early in the second half to put the score at 4-0 and the result beyond doubt. However, Castleknock were not willing to give up and they managed to get a goal about 10 minutes form the end. We hoped this might be the start of a revival, but it was Clontarf who managed to slip in another goal to leave the final score at 5-1.

After this result, Clontarf are 2nd in the league one point behind Dunshaughlin. However, they have a game in hand and judging by their form in this match, they would have to be favourites to take the title.

We have our final match of the season on Monday night. I hoe we can end on a good result.

Final two fixtures of the season

Our final two matches of the season will be home matches played over the next few days. On Saturday 26th of April we will host Clontarf, with kick-off at 10:45am and on the evening of Monday 28th of April we will Host Maynooth with kick-off at 7:15pm.

Hopefully we can end out season with performances closer to how we started the season rather than our recent poor form. Make sure you are in Porterstown at least 15 minutes before kick-off.