Tough lessons to learn hopefully serve a purpose

A tough day for Ottawacker Jr. who learned the hard way what happens when you fail to prepare for a football match at a higher level (i.e., in this case, the U14s). Could have been a lot worse for him, but there will no doubt be more difficult lessons ahead. In essence, we turned up at the Dome at 7:30am for his warm-up for the 8am kick-off against TFC, and he discovered he had left his football boots (or “cleats” as they like to call them here) at home. Thankfully, it was at the RA Centre, the closest possible place to our house, so I was able to get in the car and zoom back with the cleats in around 15 minutes. But his warm-up was shorter and he was clearly distracted. In the first half, he made three errors of concentration and decision making, and his team blew a two-goal lead to go in at 3-2 down at half-time. The game finished 4-3 to TFC after they were gifted a last-second penalty (which had nothing to do with Ottawacker Jr.) but there was no doubting he blamed himself. Good. His coach and team mates were brilliant by the way. He is in a good team, no doubt about it.
 
Anyway, we had a chat and tried to refocus him. He went out for a bus ride by himself to start his Christmas shopping, so I reordered the DVDs and did some tidying. Then, I took him to his afternoon practice out at Louis Riel, where he was in much better form. Home for dinner, and we watched the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
 
Elsewhere, the Liverpool game was postponed because of Storm Daragh. This is a good thing, especially as the 115ers (who might actually be the 130ers) dropped more points… and the Manchester United re-re-re-re-reboot failed once more to gain momentum.