Bournemouth away - U12 Boys

So we had a mixed team of old salts and new players. We had a team that played together competitively for the first time and did so on a full size pitch. That is a lot of 'firsts' and the boys did really well. And I mean REALLY well. The first third was mostly us and, to be honest, I think the Bournemouth boys were in shock. Alex Birmingham showed a cool head in the D and capitalised on our forward pressure. Bournemouth came out in the 2nd third and very much took the game to us. We had to defend a series of short corners and I was impressed by the way in which everyone carried out their roles. Rory Ethelstone was like a rocket at number 1 and disrupted their strikes on goal. Bournemouth did score from a short but the ball never travelled outside the D (Andover boys are well aware of this rule!) so a '16' ensued.

Unsurprisingly, the tactic of multiple substitutions disrupted positional understanding but this all part of learning to communicate on the pitch. Identifying a stray opponent and picking him up to help out your team is as important as delivering a good pass. What really impressed me was the commitment of all concerned and the signs of good hockey (looking up, passing to players who had made themselves available and some strong tackles in defence). Ethan Singh Mal was "bossing it", as I was told by one of his team, and Ivo Briant-Evans helped bring my heart rate back down on numerous occasions.

While I am not sure that I want to continue the tactic of letting their attackers run unchallenged into the D, only to be denied by Haydn Carr in goal, it was very exciting! More defensive work to do on Saturday mornings, me thinks, but the tactic of 'tease them then swarm them' is no longer in the play book!

I could mention everyone but I shan't. Sadly, we lost 2-1, which was a fair result I think, as Bournemouth had the edge overall. What we must work on is our ability to pass the ball over more than 5 metres. As soon as we do that, we shall find that the pitch opens up and we can move the ball from side to side and away from danger, thus avoiding 6 of our players being within a 5 metre radius (which happened at one point!).

All in all, we came off the pitch better than when we went on and that was my aim. Well done.