We arrived at Wilmslow in good time only to find that we were playing on astro but a number of the boys hadn’t brought their trainers! Not the best of starts but that was the only thing that gave us a slight problem despite losing 3 of our older boys to the U14s, namely Dan Jones, Josh Pink and Ben Mochan. Despite these big losses, the rest of the Mellor U12s stepped up to the plate and had a fairly easy game which saw Mellor 5-0 up at the end of the first quarter, during which Joe Hussey was prolific, both in terms of scoring and in assisting goals for others. The second quarter saw us add another 5 goals including a nice little nutmeg “roll in” from Joe Hussey with Wilmslow pulling one back but not really troubling us. Will Macdonald had only a couple of saves to make over the first 2 quarters play and the only real blip was the send off in the second quarter for Drew Bickerton who demonstrated “unsportsman- like conduct” for a push on one of the opposition. The third quarter was equally productive for Mellor goals and despite Wilmslow giving a good fight with a few more chances which Will Mac ably dealt with, Mellor started the final quarter 14-2 up. Again, the goals kept coming with a further 5, including 2 from Josh Poke and a second from Rory Fell, which involved a nice double – pirouette through the centre before blasting it into the Wilmslow net. The final score was 19-2 and was a great demonstration of Mellor’s accurate passing and catching, team spirit, reliability in defence and total commitment in the middle of the field. All this despite being on a very fast astro surface. There could be many contenders for man of the match - as usual Ben Tipping and Josh Poke were very solid throughout, scoring 2 and 3 goals respectively and there were 8 different goal scorers. Overall I would name Joe Hussey as man of the match, which saw him scoring 4 and assisting no less than 7 of the 19 goals.
Stats
Scorers: Rory Fell 2, Josh Poke 3, Tom Brady 2, Drew Bickerton 2, Sam Griffiths 3, Joe Hussey 4, Nick Hughes 1, Ben Tipping 2.
Saves - Will Macdonald 7.
Assists – Drew 5, Ben Tipping 1, Joe Hussey 7.