Concentrating on the league

A really tough game today against the top team in division 1.

With the squad a bit depleted - Jonny was out with a bad back (thanks to Arthur for stepping in), Miles has a broken foot, Sam is struggling with injury - it was always going to be hard. Jack from the U13s helped us out again making the team up to 11.

We worked incredibly hard in the first half to contain Purton and held them to just two goals. Unfortunately a big difference in fitness and squad depth meant they took hold in the second half and scored a few more, particularly near the end.

The scoreline is not important. The key thing is to learn from the match:
- we played well in the first half - defending and marking well
- Purton's passing and movement was highly impressive - we need to play more like this
- we were rarely first to the ball from clearances/goal kicks - we must challenge harder for the ball
- when we tired our marking became sloppy and we left big holes for them to score too easily

Please encourage the boys to think about the lessons we learnt today and think how to improve their own game, rather than dwell on the scoreline. If we can take the lessons from today into the league it will really help us.

Well done to the defence who had to work hardest today. Jack had a great game and was determined to play good football. Will received man of the match for some excellent defending against some quality players.

Training tomorrow from 7.15 at the St Jo's.

Next Sunday we are due to be at home to Sevenfields 10am for 10.30 kick off