Double Success for Year 8 Boys
Mid-Sussex Football Tournament
13th October 2011
St Paul’s came away from the first round of the Year 8 boys Mid Sussex football
tournament with two reasons to be happy. In a tightly contested tournament between
local rivals Oakmeeds, Oathall and the hosts Downlands, St Paul’s did brilliantly
in both our A and B teams.
Our A team began with a very even match against Downlands, with whom we had drawn
2-2 the previous week in an eleven-a-side fixture, but thanks to a wonder goal from
Charlie Kelly St Paul's managed to edge a win.
The next game was against Oathall and despite dominating large periods of the game,
missed chances cost us and Oathall stole the game to win. The team’s performance
merited a more favourable result.
This meant that the A team’s final match against Oakmeeds was a must-win game if
we were to have any hope of progressing as one of the top two teams into the next
round of the tournament. Both sides were a bit cagey during the opening periods,
but soon our quality showed as a Jake Ghosh hat-trick gave St Paul’s a deserved
3-0 win.
The win put us top of the group thanks to a better head-to-head result against Downlands,
which meant our A team progressed to the next round as group winners. This was even
more satisfying thanks to some of the fantastic football they played along the way,
aided by another exceptional display in defence by Sean Sage and Charlie Saich,
with Tom Jex pulling off some fantastic saves in goal.
Our B team then showed that our Year 8 team at St Paul’s has plenty of squad depth
and talent as they too progressed as group winners thanks to an impressive three
wins out of three.
An incredible achievement, which was even more outstanding considering their dominance
of play against the other teams, which was a joy to watch and emphasised that the
work we’re doing in training is paying off and as a whole squad we are getting stronger
and stronger as each game comes along.
Our B team employed a rotational policy in their playing positions to allow everyone
to get a chance to play in both attack and defence, a tactic which obviously worked,
as not only did they show great teamwork and team spirit in independently sorting
out who was playing where, but their results were very convincing.
St Paul's B team won their first two matches, which meant that their final game against
Oakmeeds, who had also won their two matches, was a decider as to who would win
the group.
After Jacob Strange had opened the scoring, the win was made more comfortable when
Tom Morrissey turned in from close range after great work from Dominic Hillier on
the wing. St Paul’s B team then saw the match out playing some superb football to
record a 3-1 win and deservedly finished top of their group with a perfect record,
which meant they too also progress to the next stage of the tournament.
We can now look forward to the next stage of the tournament as we look to build
on the impressive start we have made to our football this year at St Pauls.
Mr G. Laming (Football Coach)