Moving the goalposts

Long time, no write. We are well into the second year of our stay and all is well. The school year and football season are underway and we enter the second cycle of seasons. It’s a great temperature at the moment, perhaps for one more month, then grey, grey, grey and cold for a few months, if last year is anything to go by.

It has been great fun to write the blog and to get reactions, public and private, but now I am allowing the sun to set on it.

This was from our half-term holiday last week on an island in the south of the country. A fantastic, rustic resort.

Internet access here is not entirely reliable. Not only can it be entirely down for hours, some websites can mysteriously become unavailable, like this gentle, innocent blog last week. Perhaps something to do with http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/24/vietnam-bloggers-go-on-trial

That doesn’t make it easier to blog but the main reason for stopping now is that my life is being taken over by youth football. I’m running the Hanoi Youth Football League, www.hyfl.org, which has been somewhat demanding as we get 4 age groups up and running for the season.

I’ve ended up in some unusual situations in the course of my duties too. One of the most surreal was supervising the moving of some goalposts between pitches. It had to be done at night in order to avoid the traffic and the league’s administrator texted me at 9 to say that they were on their way. I rushed to the pitch in time to see the approaching headlights and the goalposts almost tear down an awning.

It turned out that the driver and his assistants were rolling drunk. The driver leapt out of the van and ran over to remonstrate with the car park attendant (for some unknown reason), giving off the international male signals for “Do what I say or I’ll slap you”. Watching them unload the goalposts was like watching newborn foals trying to pole vault. “Clumsy” doesn’t even cover it halfway. The posts wobbled wildly and were dropped off the van then lifted over the fence, as your brave photographer kept his distance.

And of course by then they had turned off the floodlights…

Anyway, after no apparently serious injuries, the goals could be slid into place and are now used by the league.

The driver (who had not sobered up) approached us to say that the job had been considerably more dangerous than he had anticipated. Yes, well, crossing town with two unsecured goalposts after a skinful is like that. He demanded to renegotiate the price and his crowning argument was that “the police might have stopped me!” He had his goons with him and I didn’t fancy a physical contest so we coughed up more money. (Yup, that’s what your registration fee is going on, HYFL parents :p )

Bye for now

Tim

 

End of year 1

Wow, that went quickly. Everything breaking up next week, some friends have already left and others are in the final spasms of leaving, plans for next year are half-made.

Over the year, the amazing has become the normal. An incredible cloudburst the other day led to puddles bigger than swimming pools (not sure it qualified as flooding around these parts though) and motorbike chaos: I didn’t even mention it to the family. Insects twice the size of ones that previously would have caused a violent panic now get beaten to death by hand. And we laugh at how in the first week we were rather concerned when we found a gecko in our hotel room. Now we are just pleased for the company as the fish have proved rather flimsy and indeed short-lived.

We are looking forward to spending the summer touring Vietnam, moving house and then trekking around Norway and England. And so when we come back it will be to a place with a pool and a cat. Maybe the cat will get the geckos; we certainly hope she will get the rats.

And so what am I going to do? Well, I think being the new chairman of the Hanoi Youth Football League might take up some of my time… Click here and here to see two cracking videos of what the League is about. The mix is incredible: There are teams from an orphanage, teams from a charity for ex-street children, Vietnamese schools, and a dazzling array of international teams.

Anyway, I am permanently jetlagged at the moment due to watching the tennis which is on late at night but this is just practice for the Euros, where matches will kick off at 11 pm and 1.45 am…. and the girls want to be woken up for the three England disasters. Poor inexperienced things.

 

Excuse the break. Normal football service will now be resumed

I have got out of the rhythm of writing the blog. I suppose that’s because life in Hanoi is becoming more routine now, and the bleeding weather is still grey…. I have settled into a pattern of writing manuscripts and other psychology-related work, learning Vietnamese, playing tennis, drinking beer, but more than all of that I have been watching children’s football, coaching children’s football, and talking about children’s football.

Take a look at these pictures from last weekend’s international tournament in Hanoi.

Jemima’s team before the first match:

Look carefully below and you will see a great Saskian save. On to the post and out! Match ended 0-0.

Gold Star Hanoi North U-13s get organised

The tournament consisted of a clutch of school and club teams from Hanoi, plus elite teams from Vietnam and Singapore (my stomach turned as a phalanx of boys in Arsenal kit wandered by. Is it wrong to still be glad that they lost on penalties in the final?), but by far the most delightful, special, cheerful (and at time of writing, incongruous) teams were the two girls’ teams from Hue in central Vietnam. They laughed, smiled and encouraged. They warmed up in a ring on the pitch and got other children to join in. When playing, they crunched into fair tackles and then went to pick the opposing player up as gently as a nurse would do. The adults, substitutes and even the players on the pitch clapped when the opposition scored. In theory, I am all for a Scandinavian approach to fair play but I have yet to squeeze out a warm smile as the ball hits the back of my team’s net. These girls managed it.

To cap it all, they starred at the awards ceremony with a traditional dance.

The Arsenal boys then got up and sang “One Tony Adams”. No, OK, they didn’t.

So, well done Hue girls, and thank you for lighting up the tournament. It turns out that the project that they are part of is funded by Norway and has a heavy emphasis on developing social and practical skills, and other ways to help these underprivileged children.

 

Pre-season get-together

The Hanoi Youth Football League starts next week. There has been some “blood-and-guts” training, a pre-season tournament in 40+ degrees and to cap it off the players and parents of Gold Star Hanoi – South are spending the weekend at a glorious resort appropriately enough part owned by Luis Figo.

What a place this is. We are being pampered and are having a super time. The views are incredible, the food delicious. We had a little adventure on the way over the lake to get here, with the boat’s engine overheating and us drifting offshore for a short while, before transferring to another boat.

Only one more day here, before we go back to “the harsh reality of Hanoi”.

The children were taken fishing, and taught a lesson: They caught nothing :p

The place is stylish yet understated

Idyllic

Your trusty photographer finding the angles…

Spoilt? Moi?

Then a storm brewed…

and then it hit…