Saturday saw the U10’s Red travel to Godmanchester along side the U9’s at Hinchingbrooke College on the 3G pitches

Having only had one week back with the lads, one friendly one training session and three players away leaving us with no subs it was certainly going to be interesting. The Hunts league play an extra 10 minutes a match and goal keepers aren’t allowed to kick the ball out unless it’s a goal kick, this needs a mention because I felt it played a big factor in the result,

We started with Jack Roberts in goal, Riley Deadman centre back, Ryan Dunthorne Right wingback, Ellis Horn Left wingback, Callum McAuley Centre Mid-field, Alfie Rogers Centre Mid-field and Omar Ellis as our striker.

First half we started really strong and within three minutes we forced an own goal from Godmanchester which came from pure pressure. I personally felt the first half we were the much better team, we played with width and stretched our opponents. This gave us great success down both wings with the final ball letting us down, but this made me really happy as we spent more time down the wings trying to get the ball in the danger area than we did most of last season all games put together. From corners and crosses we had three headers on target with the very strong Godmanchester keeper keeping them out. Couple of them might have been given as penalties on another day. We hit the woodwork three - four times as well We lost three goals in the first half due to us having to throw the ball out and a few of our defenders trying to dribble the ball out this invited pressure onto us and left Jack one on one. Very pleased with the first half.

Second half saw some heads go down after Godmanchester scored again, we had tired legs and our opponents had just brought on four sets of fresh legs, this made us slow to most off the loose balls and our mid-field lost shape pushing forward in search of goals. We went on to concede another three goals, out of the total one was superbly well worked by Godmanchester and two more were very good goals, which I thought we could have done more defensively to prevent. We created a lot of chances ourselves, still attacked every chance we got, Godmanchester were very organized defensively making it very hard for us to get an end product , their covering and support play was one of the best performances I’ve seen so far in my time as a youth coach.

So I don’t want any of the lads to be dishearten by this result, we’ve only had a week back and the improvement in the way we tried to play and the extra effort shown from last week game was extremely pleasing. I have given lots of new techniques and methods to learn and apply and I don’t expect them to work straight away, having said that I was amazed at our much you’ve learnt in this last week. I know some of you weren’t that happy after the match, but I’m letting you all know I was very happy with your performances. Well done everyone!

Keep your heads up, training hard, put the effort in and you’ll take out Success!

Go Go Pumas!