Complacency the seed of failure

Last week my current team matched up against a cross city rival, the Zagreb Raiders. It was a intense and hard fought game for both teams and even though both teams played hard the Final outcome was 19-3 in favor of my team the Zagreb Thunder.
      Every week is a new experience for me and honestly I have no clue what to expect, so as you might expect I am looking forward to new games every week like a kid at a candy store.  This was the first game that my stupid lingering ankle injury did not keep me from running outside the pocket and making some ground action happen. One highlight includes a 74 yard scramble that ended up on the 1 yard line with me in pain and a Zagreb Raider with a hand full of hair......
     The reason I title this complacency is the seed of failure is because after a great game and a excited and re-energized Zagreb Thunder, Tuesday and Thursday had an average of 15 players at practice......(That is a number that will cause any true lover of American football to grind their teeth and be just as frustrated as their coach) Especially because this weekends match up is the Ljubljana Silverhawks, arguably the best team in the Central European Football League (CEFL). And just because we got a victory against the Raiders does not mean that the Silverhawks are going to just lay down and take it easy on us this week.......
    Matter of fact, it looks like my team will pad up 19-25 players to compete at a level that the Thunder have not seen in the 2012 season. Week by week, I stress at all team meetings and practice wrapups the danger of mistranslating potential for success....for there are many many talented players and people with potential that are flipping burgers and sitting on coaches watching the players and people excel at things that they were much more equipped to be great at but because of cancerous complacency.........are not doing anything with all the potential that was given to them.  That my friends is why I feel I need to remind my boys as well as my readers....complacency.....is......the.....seed.....of......failure.

Last weeks W is in the bank, now we have to go earn another one.

THUNDER READY. #HIT/BREAK

Games Games Games and more Games (RECAP TIME)

                                                           Thunder VS Patriots

Post game talk with Cannons

Thunder VS Generals

The 2012 football season in Croatia has been a bumpy one to say the least. Despite some adversity we are sitting on a 2-1 Croatian record. As you might have read in a prior post I managed to find myself with a level 3 ankle sprain 5 days before my first official game of the season. Oh the irony....yes I know.  But despite my injury and also a torn Achilles tendon on our other import, the Zagreb Thunder have seemed to rise from our hard circumstances and played some good football and got a couple wins. :D

 The first team we played were the Zagreb Patriots, a well coached and heavily stacked team in comparison. (player numbers, imports, etc) despite me being a little above crippled this game our team managed to rise to the occasion and play semi well vs the what seems to be outright better football team. The final score of this game was 33-0, a score that does not reflect a couple Thunder trips to the red zone and hard fought battle between cross town rivals.

The next game was vs a struggling program the Osijek Cannons, the coaching staff and I knowing that this game was going to be one of our less strenuous games decided that I should not play much because of my recovering ankle but because of an injury to our QB I went in at the end of the game and with a game total of about 8 plays managed to score a touchdown and help lead our team to victory.    The Zagreb Thunder showed flashes of great potential with a couple of very well executed plays and intensity but still lacked the full comprehension of our playbook, (offense and defense).

A week after these 2 Croatian League games, we took a bus to play an international game in Slovenia. Week 3 of the 2012 season we padded up to play the Maribor Generals. This is a team with a talented Slovenian National team ready QB. But this proved to be a challenge on our defense considering we brought 20 total players to the game and ZERO corners but we played relatively good football in comparison to the adversity. I had never in my life felt this shorthanded, but after a 35-18 loss, I was actually quite proud of the guys that came to play because the players with almost no experience in pass coverage managed to do a pretty good job. For me personally this was the first game that I was able to be semi mobile on my ankle and because of that stayed in the pocket as QB most of the game and passed for maybe 200+ yards 1 TD and had 1 rushing TD. Not phenomenal stats, but......starting to show that, Mr. Jones is healing. :)