Happy Holidays!

Just wanted to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I hope everyone has a great time with friends and family. I'm really excited to be home and spending this time with everyone here. Already looking forward to 2012, I'm excited to get back to playing soon. Can't wait to get started in the New Year and have my best year yet. Will keep you all updated with whats happening, but for now enjoy the holidays!

All the best,

Robbie

Home

So it’s now less than 2 weeks until Christmas and I’ve been home for almost a month and a half. I had planned to write a review on my season on here as soon as I got home, and now here I am a month and a half later, finally writing it.

So before I get to my season in Norway, I’ll write a bit about what I’ve been up to at home. I got home on Halloween and had a few days to re-adjust to the time zone, see friends, etc. and then I was off to Hawaii with my parents. Although I have been doing a ton of traveling lately, this was my first non-soccer related, relaxing holiday I’ve had in years. It was great to get to spend some time with my parents, who I hadn’t seen much of over the summer and just totally unwind, after a long season. We went to Kaui’i, which is a great place to go on holiday. The highlight of the trip for me was going surfing for the first time! It was a great trip, but by the end of it, I was ready to return home and spend some more time seeing friends. When I got home I started back up with my coaching job at Peace Arch Soccer Club/South Fraser Soccer Club, which I really enjoy doing. My job as a staff coach is basically to go around and help all of the coaches/teams that need assistance and quite often I end up joining in and playing in the practices. It’s a great job and I love getting involved with the soccer at my old club, in my hometown.

So now onto Norway. I had a great experience there this year. It’s always difficult to join a team mid-season (which I seem to have a habit of doing lately!), but I think I did well to break into the team and establish myself a bit. I was always in the First team squad for games, and I was always getting a full game every week with the Reserves, if I didn’t play for the First team. Before I went over there, I made it a goal of mine to join a team, where I would be playing week in, week out. So I’m glad I was able to accomplish that. Another goal of mine, was to join a team in the 2^nd Division, which I also accomplished. The level of training was also fantastic. I was challenged everyday and I looked forward to getting to training everyday, which is so important. There were so many quality players on my team, that I’m glad I got to play with and become good friends with. It was fun for me to get to fly all over Norway for games and see some of the country. I really enjoyed living in the capital city of Oslo, which is a fantastic city to live in. I really love Norway, the football is great, people are fantastic and overall, I just feel at home there. My only real complaint about living there is the cost of living. It’s such an expensive place and I don’t know if I will ever be able to adjust to that completely. I’m definitely able to say that when I left at the end of the season, I was a much better player overall and the experience was completely worth it.

As of right now, I’m just enjoying being home around my friends and family. I’m continuing to train hard and looking to keep all of my options open for next season and the New Year. I believe I have some good opportunities lined up and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next in my career, but for now I’m mostly excited to have a great Christmas, with everyone I care about around me. I will try to write an update again soon.

Robbie.

Trip to Milan

Another season in Europe has come to the end for me. My season ended on Saturday the 22^nd and I was lucky enough to get a chance to travel to Milan last week, for a few days. My good friend Alexa, has been living there and it was great to go and see how she's been living. This was my first trip to Italy and I really enjoyed it. Milan seems like a really interesting and busy city; it’s certainly a lot different than Oslo. I was really happy about the low prices on pretty much everything. As much as I love living in Norway, I have to admit the extremely high prices here are starting to get a bit annoying. So it was nice to be able to go out and get a Large pizza for lunch for 6 Euro! There were a lot of great shops and football seemed to be everywhere. One of the highlights of the trip for me, was going to AC Milan Vs Parma. San Siro Stadium was huge, definitely the biggest stadium I’ve ever seen in person. The atmosphere at the game was quite good, considering the stadium was only just over halfway full. The game itself was actually quite a good one, Milan won comfortably 4-1. I really liked their style of play, they played a nice short passing game and seemed to box Parma into their own half, the whole game. Antonio Nocerino scored a hat trick, including a great volley directly in front of where we were sitting. I was most of all excited to see Robinho play though, he only played a few minutes, but he made everything look so easy. Overall I had a great trip in Milan and I’m so glad I got a chance to go there and check it out. Now I’m back in Oslo and heading back to Canada on Monday. I will write a review on my season with Kjelsås and post it on the blog in the next couple of days.

Norway Vs Cyprus

Yesterday was a busy day for me, but a very good day. I started the day training in Bodø, before heading to the airport and flying back to Oslo. As soon as I got home, I got my stuff together and made my way to training with Kjelsås. I then went home again and ate a bit of dinner and headed off to the Norway Vs Cyprus game a few minutes away at the national stadium, Ullevall Stadion. It was a freezing night, but it was a fun game to watch. This was the first Norwegian National team game I have seen. Norway won 3-1, but unfortunately they did not qualify for Euro 2012.

Bodø Visit

I’m writing this post from the sky, currently flying back to Oslo from Bodø. I was lucky to have a chance to return to Bodø (the city I played in last year) and go visit my old friends. Unfortunately in my last match for Kjelsås I got a red card, so I had the weekend off and decided to head up North. I left last Thursday and spent 5 nights in Bodø. It was a great trip, I really enjoyed my time in Bodø last year and it was really nice to come back and get to see everyone there. I was able to train with my old team a few times and it was a good feeling to get back out onto the field at Aspmyra Stadion again. I stayed with my good friends Hans-Vilhelm and Bjørn-Otto, who both are still playing for Bodø/Glimt. We mostly just relaxed, watched movies and played a lot of Fifa. It was definitely a strange feeling for me to be back in Bodø. It had been about exactly one year since I left there, which is really hard to believe. There was definitely a huge change in weather from Oslo to Bodø. It was so much colder in Bodø and I could definitely feel that I was North of the Arctic circle again! On Saturday night, we had a great view of the Northern Lights, which although I have seen before, I'm still amazed every time I see them. It’s a very cool sight to see and one that everyone should try and see at some point. So now I’m heading back to Oslo and I have less than two weeks remaining in the season. I have two more games to play and I’m looking forward to having two good final games there.

This week

It's friday afternoon and I'm just taking it easy at home. I need to clean my place up a bit and do some grocery shopping to fill the fridge... But wanted to quickly update the blog. It's been a hard week at training, my body is pretty sore and I'm starting feel like it's close to the end of a long season. We have one more training session this week (this afternoon) and a game tomorrow away to Ørn-Horten. Horten is a small town, about 2 hours from Oslo I believe and it should be a tough game. I played another solid 90 minutes for the reserves on Monday. I started at left midfield again and was happy with my performance. We came back from 2-0 down, to finish the game 2-2, which was a pretty good result for us. I ended up playing the last 20 minutes of the game at left back; which I have done in training a few times, but never before in a real game! It was fun though and I enjoyed playing in that game. See the photo below from the game...