Last Saturday, Rochedale Rovers successfully ran its first Coaches education session. The first session covered a selection of exercises for passing and receiving the ball. The session was a great success as all coaches were able to contribute and share their experience in coaching juniors. These sessions are targeted for coaches of under 8 to under 11 teams but all coaches are welcome to attend, especially new coaches willing  to learn from seasoned veterans.

The next coaching sessions will be on the following dates:

Sunday 11th March - 10am to 11.30am on Field 3

Sunday 18th March - 10am to 11.30am on Field 3

Sunday 25th March - 10am to 11.30am on Field 3

Please make sure you bring along your boots, water, suncream and a pad and pen.

See you there on Sunday

Tom Ashton

JDOC SSF

KENNY'S COMMENTS

Rovers Stormed home in the second half to dish out a hammering to North Pine

Assistant coach Kenny Armstrong shares his thoughts here:

The 5-0 showing on the scoreboard was in the end I feel a true reflection of our superiority on Sunday.

The first half was certainly scrappy and disjointed but I felt mainly due to the enterprise and work rate

Of McLean ,Hughes and Smits we just about deserved our narrow half time lead.

If the first half was tight ,the second period was really one way traffic and although the visitors never

Stopped trying I thought we were very comfortably the better team.

In the first half we mainly relied on Terry, Jake and Tim to create things for us and they had a battle on their hands against a team who defended in big numbers.

The introduction of a “wound up” Ruben Way at half time gave us an extra little bit of X Factor but the previously mentioned 3 Musketeers Continued to torment North Pine  and eventually shared the 5 goals between them.

North Pine did have the occasional moment in the game but they were few and far between and Mario and the rest of our defence were up to the task of keeping a clean sheet.

It may be an obvious statement but I really felt we got better as they game went on and hopefully that will be a trend for the season.

KEN ARMSTRONG'S COMMENTS

Rovers picked up maximum points after the tough road trip to Redcliffe.

Here Assistant Coach Ken Armstrong offers his thoughts on the round 2 Fixture

Mission accomplished!

The order of the day was to make the trip across the Hornibrook Bridge and return with 3 points and the desired outcome was achieved with the help of a little luck and a lot of determination and courage

With not a little amount of skill thrown in for good measure.

Goals from big time performers Tim Smits and TerrryHughes got us into a favourable position and some outstanding defensive work in particular by Nick Esthadis made sure there was no repeat of last week

When we squandered a 2 goal lead.

The return of Terry to our midfield was a plus as was the continued outstanding form of Smitsy.The strong central defensive showing of Nick and Sato (both returning from lay offs)was also very pleasing,with Jake McLean also showing signs of approaching his peak after a disrupted pre season.

4 points from the opening 2 fixtures whilst obviously not as good as 6 is okay especially as we feel we still have plenty of improvement in us.

BREAKING NEWS

Rochedale Rovers under 19 team on Tuesday night overcame a dogged Olympic F.C. outfit to take out the prestigious Craig Barnes Memorial Youth cup for the second year in a row.

A cool finish by Andy Thompson in the 27th minute was enough to secure the spoils for the talented Rovers youngsters in a typically tense final.

Thompson ran on to a superb through ball from Robbie Armstrong and showed great composure to lift the ball over the advancing keeper and put Rovers in front after a tight and even opening to the game.

The remainder of the game developed into an even affair and the Rovers defence were superb in dealing with the very speedy Olympic attack,and Jarryd Andrews was particularly impressive.

Rookie coach Mark Cruse and his young charges have really done a fine job in the pre season and the way ahead looks bright.

It's great for the club to see these young guns following on from the Senior team who a few weeks ago picked up the Silver Boot pre - season comp

The opening game of the season has left me with mixed feelings.

Relieved that we have come out of the other end of tough week not having lost but bitterly disappointed that we were unable to hold on to a well deserved 2 goal half time advantage.As I said in our match day magazine Easts will never surrender and 90+ minutes of tough competition and concentration is minimum requirement when they are the opposition.

We were clearly superior in the opening period a period by the way where we lost Carl Tabulo to a hamstring injury and Cody  Lovell broke a bone in his arm,but Easts also clearly held the upper hand in the second half.

The reason I mentioned being relieved was that if someone had promised us a point in the middle of the week we probably would have accepted it gratefully.At that stage we were struggling to work out our line up and our list of unavailable players was growing hourly,but we always know we can field a good team in any circumstances and I think that was proved on Friday night.

We possibly ran out of gas in the second half but that was probably to be expected with a number of the guys coming into this one without sufficient game time miles in their legs and some others still suffering effects from the bruising 120 minute encounter in the Silver Boot final (look what happened to Lions)just the Sunday before.

It was a decent season debut for Jake McLean who had an impressive first half before a quieter second period(his first proper hit out for a few weeks)and a very valiant and honest effort from former captain Steven Carter who risked his reputation by answering the call by Brownie to plug the gap at Left back.You would never have guest that it is almost 18 months since he used to call that role his own.He didn't let the team or himself down.

Very special mention must also be made of the extraordinary courage shown by Cody Lovell who played 89 minutes with a broken bone in his arm.

It is probably clear when you read this that we had a lot of good players unavailable but it also true that we have a lot of good players to take over and we offer no excuses nor do we need to because we turned in a good performance as did our opponents and finishing up with a point is not a disaster.