The sun shone as our U12’s took part in the Coldwell Cup at Welwyn this weekend. An unusual scoring system saw us win all 5 of our games, convincingly, yet we walked away as runners up. But that didn’t dampen our spirits as we claimed another unbeaten moral victory.

5 games of 12 minutes doesn’t leave much margin for error and goals dictated the overall outcome. Our first game against Portsmouth saw us win 6 – 1 before we played a very young team from Hitchin winning 12 – 3. After lunch we were back on familiar turf playing Sheffield which we won by 5 – 1 in a game where we struck the post 4 times.

So, 3 out 3 and we faced our season rivals Wilmslow. Desperate to beat us, and cheering along all of our opposition, the Wilmslow boys were looking for revenge following Flags Final and this proved to be the game of the day. The odds were against us as Wilmslow had their top 6 players on the pitch and were winning their games by large margins but some great man on man play by Josh Haining and Drew Bickerton and some lethal finishing from Sam Griffiths and George Shonfeld saw us walk away with an 8 – 5 victory. The win was made all the sweeter by Ned Donovan’s finest performance in goal to date as he saved several powerful efforts, especially from Wilmslow’s No 34.

We entered the last game 3 points behind Wilmslow under the bizarre points per goal system but put 12 past TASIS without reply setting up an unusual final game. Wilmslow had to beat Hitchin by 10 to win the tournament and Hitchin, without a goalkeeper, called on our very own Drew Bickerton to step between the posts.

Wilmslow won the game comfortably but Drew was fantastic as he almost singlehandedly kept the scoreline acceptable. The kids from Hitchin responded well and will no doubt have the tournament on a high.

And as Wilmslow lifted the trophy I think we all knew who’d really deserved the accolade – 5 out of 5 says it all. Our boys congratulated Wilmslow in the way we’d expect them too and returned home with another, albeit smaller, piece of silverware to cap off an unbelievable season.

Thanks to everyone for making the effort to come and hopefully, by now, the swimming pool at the hotel will have dried out after the boys bombing demonstrations before breakfast on Sunday!