he weather was also absolutely gorgeous, maybe slightly too hot but no wind which was a blessing.the event was organised by the village of hope sports outreach team, with the help of our three wonderful sports students from the HAN university in holland (djuri, talitha and jasper), who certainly benefited from the support their fellow students gave them.
the day started with the collection of the children around the informal and formal settlements of grabouw, the 65 seater bus to left waterwerks informal settlement at 8.30am and then ventured round to the rest of the areas (hillside, rooidakke and iraq) to collect the children to who arrived in fine spirits at the elgin country club at 9.15am. all of this went to plan and we were met by the children of remhoogte farm (commonly known at remwater by the dutch students!).
as we made our way from the bus we were greeted by the willing team of volunteers from both the HAN university and also the students from the ukuqala team, (stuttgart university), who had been busy setting up the football and netball pitches ready for the games to start at 10.00am.
as we sorted the 90 children into their teams, under 12's and under 16's boys football and 3 netball teams, they were also introduced to their 'managers' for the day (made up of the university students and our sports mentors from our weekly clubs) and given their kits, and after a short talk and prayer the action started.
the standard of football was amazing, the children have developed so much since we start
ed working with them and every team was very evenly matched, their team spirit and team work was something to behold and the overall behaviour of these children is something that our team can be very proud of. some of the poorest and most needy children in our town w
ould put some of the riches and most privileged children (and adults) to shame.....we are so proud of them.
for the record we had 5 teams enter the under 12's tournament, which was won by waterwerks on goal difference from iraq, unfortunately remhoogte didn't win a game but had a bonus of playing against the lovely young ladies from HAN university as their prize!...
..the under 16's tournament was once again a hard fought contest, the 6 teams played some of the best football that we have seen since starting with these children over 3 years ago. a special mention must go to hillside who beat one of the waterwerks teams and held their own in their other games against much stronger and larger opposition. not for the first time arron's rooidakke team won the prize.
and the prize was for the under 12's and under 16's to play a 10 minute game against the german and dutch students, which was a real sight to behold, both children's sides managed to sneak a win which made them very happy.
the netball was also a hard fought competition, to see the girls from very different areas, different races and tongues come together to play sport was wonderful to see, this competition was won by the slightly worrying team called 'the bad girls', who narrowly beat 'frans stars' (that's one for fran black an ex volunteer who started to work with the team last year) to the title.
by 1pm we had presented the prizes to the teams, the best player awards received a new football top, under 12's choose a barcelona kit and the two boys who won the under 16's choose a liverpool shirt and a chelsea top (as a queens park rangers support it slightly guiles me to write that name on the blog, but we are called to love our neighbours and even our enemies as ourselves so i didn't really have a choice!)...each child had a warm cup of soup (not really appropriate for the weather but for them perhaps the only nutritional meal they wound receive that day) which was kindly donated by the rose an
d bull restaurant (who provide us soup each and every friday for one of the nutrition centers in rooidakke).
once the children had been dropped home, the german students were challenged to a football match by the well prepared dutch students, who must have been eyeing this fixture for some weeks as they turned out in their 'orange' baffana baffana tops!.......i (tim) was picked to play for holland, it must have been my silky cruyff skills that sold that one, i was joined by shane (our american volunteer) and arron turned out for the german team (say no more)!.....
.....you wanna know the result....well lets say that history once again repeated itself with the english ref (rob house) awarding a hotly disputed penalty to the german team in the last minute of extra time.....you can guess what happened next......no chris waddle or garreth southgate to miss that one..........sorry holland
