I have stopped playing football for 7 weeks, not by choice but because my schedule was blocked by something less important but still more essential that I had to give up kicking balls for a while.

We have a new venue for our Saturday trainings.  This is the first time the Etihad teams, both men and women, are training together outdoors.

Tonight I played like I never played football in my life. I wasted a dozen good passes and finished zero of all the easy strikes that came my way.

It didn’t help that I could hear all the collective sighs and blahs from the men’s team, although most of them are proper gentlemen, encouraging and supportive despite the successive kicking fails.

On days like this, I feel sad that I didn’t learn how to play at an early age, that the first time I kicked a soccer ball was at my early 20s. I feel like the years are passing me by and the time for improvement is slipping away like a sand dial.

But it is also on these days that I remember what my Filipino coaches taught me: More than a physical sport, football is a mental game.

I need a brain fix, I need to rethink my mind 🙂

Happy news of the day: we have an additional team car! Kudos to its hot proud momma, Marie Borg (in white).

My husband is happier than me. He can now rest from his chauffeur duties.

Keeping my fingers crossed that next training would be kinder to me.