It is a tradition, if not a rite
of passage, that certain things happen at this time of the year. The decorations
come down. Stuart Downing is always linked with a move to Spurs. A postman heads in a cross from a plumber to complete an FA Cup fairy tale for a non league club against
one of the big boys. The Gooners get an easy draw in the 4th round
to follow on from the easy draw that they got in the 3rd. And, closer
to home, Garry Lozynsky makes a New Year’s Resolution to give up smoking. Again. That is, it is, once again, his New Year’s Resolution to give up smoking –
not that he resolves to, once again, give up smoking. There can be little doubt
that he has never, ever managed to ever give up the weed at all*
But, this year, something has
happened that has taken every one by surprise. Following on from the announcement,
on Tuesday, 6th January, 2009, that training was cancelled because of the Big Freeze, virtually everyone in the
club received the following email from Jamie Roberts, a serial non-attender on Tuesday evenings.
“DAMN! I've been planning to go tonight as part of my New Year's Resolution
to train every week........see you all next week @ 6pm!”
Now, this particularly perplexed Alfers, one half of the third team Management
duo. Firstly, as Mark quite rightly points out, the attendance of Jamie Roberts
at training would be far too seismic for it simply to be covered as a New Year’s Resolution – in fact it would
be such a shift in thinking and behavioural patterns that it would be rather more of a revolution than a resolution for the
Reserve team’s leading goal scorer. Secondly, Mark points out that this
particular resolution might, in the classic mode of such things, be rather too much, too soon for Mr Roberts to cope with,
as he hasn’t yet attended a single training session all season. The smart
advice with such things is to always present oneself with achievable targets, so it would seem that it would, probably, be
best for Jamie to aim for 15 minutes at the end of a training session some time in the middle of February in the first instance,
just to break himself in. He could then build this up to a full half hour once
every fortnight by the end of March and follow this up by giving himself the whole summer off as a reward before then attacking
pre-season training with renewed gusto, hoping to manage a whole hour and a half on a semi regular basis by October. Maybe.
But finally, before he considers any of this, there is the issue of who Jamie
is going to be seeing at 6.00 pm next week and where he will be seeing them. Winter
training on a Tuesday evening at Christ College has started at 8.00 pm for the last three years so, if he intends to arrive
at the astro turf two hours earlier, he will find himself as the only Star FC representative in evidence whilst the playing
area will be flooded with mini skirted female hockey players in their early twenties.
So, on second thoughts, perhaps there is method in his apparent madness after
all!!
* Garry has informed ASIB on the
WEB that he was quite deliberate in specifically planning that he would start his latest New Year’s Resolution to give
up smoking on Wednesday, 7th January. Now, call us entrenched traditionalists
if you like, but isn’t that rather missing the point??!
