U11A at the Rugby School Tournament

Our U11A team began with great gusto against their first opponents, Bablake, keeping position effectively and communicating well with each other. The goals came quickly, all polished off by Arabella H, and an impressive performance resulted in a 4-0 win.
Gaining confidence from a first victory, the girls continued to play skilfully on the astro-turf applying the tactics that we had been working on in the Sports Hall session on Monday. Two more goals from Arabella H, and some good dribbling from Arabella S resulted in a final surge over the line from Jess R-S. This meant that we had another good win under our belts and had defeated Fairfield B.
The third match proved to be rather a tricky one as we were playing our own B team, who, being the underdogs, were clearly up for the challenge! The B’s tackled hard and put every effort into the game which resulted in us losing our shape and we started to panic. It is always hard to play your own team in a tournament situation and we should have tried to lift the standard, rather than getting in a muddle. 1-0 up at half time, it was by far our closest game so far. It was concluded by Arabella H striking an excellent hit from a penalty corner that had to be taken after central timing was over.
Disappointed with our performance, we tried to put the game behind us and move on to our next challenge, Fairfield A. Unfortunately, we seemed to have lost our nerve a little and the old familiar ‘grass style’ skills re-emerged. This resulted in our opponents scoring quickly and left our defence clearly shocked by the first goal we have let in this season. Beth D, who had been playing so well, had a leg injury and so Annie G-P was called in to help Georgy H and Sky U. We never really managed to play to our true potential throughout this game and the communication and teamwork that had been so evident at the start of the tournament appeared to be a distant memory. Despite our GKs efforts, Fairfield scored another 2 goals leaving us rather demoralized as we headed towards our final game of the afternoon.
A strong team building discussion resulted in a new determination for our final match against Spratton Hall - and what a game it was! The ball was now doing the work again and we were playing confident, solid hockey once more. Beth D and Georgy H worked tirelessly in defence and Oonagh S dominated the centre of the field. Sky U made some fabulous saves but a shot from Spratton proved to be just too wide for our GK to reach. The forwards all stepped up a gear and we had a few very near misses. Jess R-S and Arabella H worked well on the right whilst Annie G-P waited for that vital pass in the D. Finally, we were successful and Arabella H equalized for us. The final whistle blew and the Spratton Hall teacher said we had been the strongest opponents of the tournament! A super end to the day!


LRF