Tough day at the office

I start with a reminder that that we are in our first season of anything other than mini soccer.

10 games in the league, in a year that is about development. Learning for all of us. I've said there will be good and bad days, and there will.

But first let us remind ourselves that these boys are 10 years old, and having made the journey to Croydon in 6* temperatures, every one of these boys deserved to play.

We're not fighting for league titles, and every one of them deserves the right to try to prove themselves. Our hope is that in the future, we are fighting for titles, but a togetherness formed out of days like this and a commitment to playing good football will be required.
When there is no more than pride to play for, it would be wrong not to allow every one of the boys the right to show their skills on such a miserably cold day.

Having said that, we showed varying degrees of skill, and commitment.

We had 4 players playing who were under the weather this week, one of which managed 10 minutes and had to wrap up for the rest of the day. Probably should have stayed in bed, but that shows how much these boys want to play.

Now, there will be days where we'll get away with it, but against a team such as SCR it wasn't to be. They had the bit between their teeth, from going a goal down after 15 seconds, they played really good composed attacking football, mainly down the flanks, with a great striker and 3 very strong lads at the back who weren't in the mood to give anything else away.

I think we worked hard, but never really took the first opportunity to clear our lines and paid the price.

The pitch was very big, and it was a tough but fair game, which we were in until quite late, and as I said, players got their chance yesterday, many will have to ask themselves if they think they took it.

It's one thing to work hard but there has to be a commitment to the game, to tackle, when the chance arises and to play with courage when we have the ball, to release the ball to team mates rather than running ourselves into the ground in the forlorn hope that we can create a wonder goal.These details are the difference.

I told the boys after the game, that I was proud of them, as, if losing 4-1 to the top of the league makes us feel this bad, then we've obviously come a long way. This was a good game of football, and the better team won on the day. There's no shame in that.

Well done Elliott, you won MOTM by a vote over Shay, who also had a really solid game.