Match Report U7 Gala Day
On the 18th of May Ermington United hosted an U7/8 Gala Day at George Kendall Reserve. We were scheduled to play 5 games that day with the game time reduced to 10 minutes a side with a 2 minute half time. After playing a full game on Saturday, playing 5 more was a real challenge. Fortunately we had plenty of support in the form of Bridie, Lachlan and Fraser for a total rotation of 11 players. It is a credit to the atmosphere of the team that we can regularly attract this cache of talent from the U6s. They certainly helped us out on the day.
Rather than go into the specifics of each game and the talents of each player, as I normally do, I will instead give some general observations. We were defeated in every game and we didn’t score a single goal. We did try, though, and we kept trying for the whole 5 games. We played against some very good teams and there was some excellent soccer to be seen. By the end of the day the guys were exhausted, but every one of them had enough energy left to radiate pride in their accomplishments when they received their Gala day medals. Everyone had a half in goal and everyone had more than their fair share of game-play. The U6 players played as hard as any of the under 7s, even little Lachlan who had only played two SSG games previously and was the smallest player there on the day.
I was very proud of my team and their amazing spirit. After the last game when the players were shaking hands, Jack, who was our keeper for that game, shook the hand of one of the goal scorers and said to him “You scored some really excellent goals today”. That comment really hit home with me and I recalled a conversation I had had with a friend of mine about fencing. He is a sports fencer and he was telling me in glorious terms about training with a maestro that was at least an order of magnitude better at the sport than he was. He told me how much he had learned and how revitalised his training had become.
Our little team are deriving the same lessons and the same joy playing against teams that are better than they are. We improve with every match and the only reason we are doing that is because we are constantly being challenged. I hope we never have a time when we don’t struggle and the winning is easy.