TOUCH MAD First Game (Ever) in the TAS League — Wrap-up from Annabel Mackie

I, for one, was expecting blood, sweat and tears during our Touch MAD’s first appearance against a very young and sprightly Centaurs Viking Team last weekend but I am very glad to say that, although there was a lot of perspiration and tired bodies after our 40 minutes there were no injuries and only big smiles on everyone’s face at the end of the match.

After only nine lessons – and I think some of our team only had two or three – we went out on to the pitch expecting nothing but humiliation and a large scoreline against us.  Well, I think we surprised ourselves. Appearing like we were actually enjoying playing and wanting to go back out on to the pitch, I think we were all delighted with the final score of 3-8. Not bad for some ‘middle aged’ – apologies to those that are not! – beginners on their first outing.

As our co-captain, Jon McNaught said it is good that we can give the message that ‘social, competitive sport should not end in the high teens but should continue all the way up to us parents as an example to our kids. Even if this involves a lot of eye rolling from them!

All of us recognised that we wouldn’t have been such a cohesive and happy bunch if we hadn’t had our multi-talented coach-player-manager Jon Stonham to encourage, educate and direct us, aided ably by Coach Malcolm. It really made a difference having two seasoned Touch players there telling us what to do and where to be!

Despite our performance, there are many areas that we still have to put a lot of work into.  One that I heard everyone mention at the end was that we seem to have forgotten how to do the basic ‘A’ drive up the pitch and a few people admitting too ‘overstepping the mark’. It seems that we misplaced a few of our basic drills that we have learned over the weeks, so there is still a lot of work to be done on perfecting these.

Well done all!