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April 2007

A month after arriving in Malawi and a course for the FA at Bisham Abbey was the reason I returned to England. Naturally this gave me a few days to see Lucy and the girls which of course was great. The course was a level 2 tutor training update as the FA were changing certain aspects of the course, I must say that while I was not really looking forward to the course it was actually very good and I not only enjoyed doing the course but got to meet many of the coaches I had come across in the last few years which was nice.

I also attended several meetings in my efforts to try and get some sponsorship for the National team and it is good to see people are willing to help. I have also been very busy in Blantyre where I live in getting business involved with the National team and am delighted to say that company called Innscor who are the distributors for Colgate and Johnson and Johnson to name but a few of the companies have decided to come in and provide number of products and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the CEO of the company Andrew Bestor for that commitment !! The players I am sure will be delighted when they arrive at the next camp, we start preparations for the COSAFA on the 14 of May.

The COSAFA is a tournament that consists of all the Southern African nations and while it’s a great way to get international exposure the format leaves a lot to be desired! We are in a group of four teams consisting of South Africa, Swaziland the hosts and Mauritius. We were drawn against South Africa and play on Saturday as do the other two teams the winners play the winners of the other game, the very next day!! Amazing that in this day and age where we are trying to develop the game and yet we are asking players at this level to play two games in two days. You don’t even get to play the other team in the group, hopefully this will change as I understand all of the other associations have complained as well they should. Right after this on June the 3rd we have an absolutely fantastic game against one of Africa’s big teams when Senegal come to Malawi for a warm up game on there way to Mozambique while we prepare for the game on the 16th of June against Morocco in an African Cup of Nations qualifier. I hope we can rise to the occasion and do ourselves justice as these are the games you want to be involved in and well its brilliant and I cant wait.

I am also still trying to settle in Malawi and while I have found a house it is a week or so away from being ready for me to move in so looking forward to getting in the house. I must say though that my first impression of Malawi has been a positive one and the people here have been fantastic, hopefully that continues.

See you soon

Stephen