New signings inspire Nkharta Bay victory...

We arrived in Nkharta Bay (which I have to say is a beautiful place to pitch a tent!) with a guarantee of a game of football from a local man. He told us the local team would be happy to play with us so we turned up at their ground (mixture of sand and reeds) with the hope of playing a quick game. We were greeted by 2 drunk men who told us they were the coaches of the youth side (thankfully this was a lie) and wanted to play with us. At this point we were a little alarmed but there was nothing to worry about as in the far corner of the ground a group of players were getting changed and their coach was calling for us to go over and meet them.

It turned out that we weren’t going to play a game with them as they were an actual Super League team (the Super League is the top league in Malawi) and this was their training session. So we were asked to join the session and take part in each exercise. The session was a mixture of 2 touch passing, zone training and keep ball. It lasted around 2 and a half hours so we were pretty tired at the end but they all seemed suitably happy with our performances and asked us to come back the next day........

 

We turned up to find that they had organised a game against fierce local rivals, Mzuzu, where we had actually stayed 3 days previously. They were using it as a friendly match as the season starts next month and they wanted to give some of the fringe players a runout. They unfortunately couldn’t play all of us from the start but promised we’d all get to play at some point. I started upfront and played the first half which ended goalless. I had a few nice touches but nothing of note. Ed and JJ came on in the second half and Ed produced a wonderful through ball for one of the strikers but he got too excited and blazed it over the bar. The game ended 1-0 to us and the coach was delighted. We swapped some ideas on the beautiful game and they asked us what we thought they needed to work on. We left them some of the footballs and also gave some more to the local youth side.

It was a very rewarding couple of days as we got to play for a proper Malawian football team but I certainly feel sorry for a lot of these players as the pitches are really difficult to play on. Oh and by the way one of the drunks who greeted us at the start, fell over with his first touch and badly damaged his knee ligaments! Serves him right though as he was a proper idiot.

 Andy