A Friday Earned.

I've taught swim lessons for years; this is my first season coaching. After four weeks, you get an idea of each swimmer's style and work ethic.

"Life Swim practice is tough; be tougher."

You're teaching efficiency and endurance, upping the yardage and designing sprint drills, all the better to prepare them for competition. But you're also teaching attitudes, and competing against the clock and their own personal times ... it all comes packaged as "winning".

Irish journalist Paul Doyle summed up what Ireland's youth are learning this week, and truth be told, it's not such a bad lesson to learn early, so long as you keep your spirit about you:

If there’s one good thing that came out of it, and comes out of the continued refusal to use [video]technology, it’s the fact that… blatant injustices in something that’s relatively trivial like football teach you to question authority in other domains. So its a good lesson for the kids.* That’s what I was telling my son, as he was crying into his supper last night.

Plus, somebody channelled their negative thoughts about the match into creating a dance-like video. If you can't beat 'em, why not accept your loss graciously since everybody, Thierry Henry included, is admitting the refs missed the call?

But never forget.

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* that, and "Don't stop playing until you hear a whistle."