My Little Man...

started football training on Saturday. We enrolled him in a course at the Hearts Fc academy where he will learn the basics of the beautiful game along with a bunch of other 5 and 6 year olds.

Until now the most 5 year old has done regarding playing football is a kick about with his friends in the street. I wasn't sure he'd be that intrested as he seems to prefer his playstation 2 to anything else at the moment.

Anyway he was dying to go so off we went with him at 9am. He was all kitted up in his Scotland strip and new boots with his jaffa cakes and bottle of water (jaffa cakes being a compulsory requirement!) and he headed off to join all the other boys.

I was gob smacked as I stood watching him from the spectators area. He was listening and following instructions from the coaches - more than he ever does to me - and was getting stuck in. He scored a few times in the 5 a side practice and it was all going really well...until about 5 minutes from the end!

The coach has got them dribbling round plastic markers, they then have to shoot for goal and sprint back to their starting point. Jake's turn comes round and he dribbles the ball, lines up his shot, shoots, scores and sprints back...straight into the wall!! He was running that fast he couldn't stop in time! The coach takes a look at his head and decides to bring him up to where Dad and I are waiting for him to be on the safe side...by now he is sporting a nice big red mark on his forehead!

Still there was no real damage...his head has had worse knocks than this...and so we head off back to the car. I'm pleased to say it hasn't put him off so we'll be back next saturday all kitted up again...I think maybe though I'll pack his crash helmet in with his jaffa cakes this week as a precaution.

Jenny xx