The Year 10 Boys Football team put in a great performance tonight, drawing 5-5 away at Whitecross High School in the Herefordshire Schools League.  They have made great progress this year, and as an indicator of this progress, they lost the corresponding fixture 2-0 last year.

The game didn’t start well, however, with the boys conceding a goal within the first 2 minutes from a headed goal, and the boys went 2-0 on 10minutes when a cross from the right wing was again not attacked and dealt with, with the resulting knock down being tapped in at the far post.  A classic ‘heads still on the minibus’, plus we could have done with slightly longer to have warmed up.

The boys did ever so well to steady the ship, and the thought was to get in a half time and reorganise things a bit, but the added bonus was a goal from St Mary’s centre forward, Harvey W, who pulled a goal back for us on the stroke of half time, using his pace to get in behind the opposition defence on a counter attack.

With a couple of slight tactical tweaks, we got more in control of the game in the second half, and played some decent football, but our Achilles heel remained not dealing with crosses into our box against a big physical opponents.  Credit to the lads though for the resilience they showed, for whenever they went behind they got themselves back on level terms.  An early goal from Harvey, his second of the match, came 1 minute into the second half, and what ensued was quite simply a really good, entertaining game of football with both sides giving their all. Will R brought the game back to 3-3 after Whitecross had gone ahead again, and when we went down 5-3, two goals from St Mary’s captain, Zac W, the first from a long range direct free kick, and the second from a bullet header from a Will R corner, brought it back to 5-5.

In the last 5 minutes, St Mary’s looked the most likely side to get the winner as we pinned Whitecross back in their own half. Jake D hit the post, Tom L had a ball scrambled off the line at a corner, and Ewan B's header in the final seconds of the game, from another corner, that looked destined for the far corner, was well saved by the Whitecross goalie.

There are naturally certain areas for us to work on, but a great performance to take us into the Easter break, and hopefully into the semi-finals, with our record of two wins and a draw from our three group games.

Squad from: Jacub P (GK), Ben B, Tom L, Ewan B, Connor P, Zak W (Capt), Jake D, Fin H, Dan S, Harvey W, Will R, Fin W, Lewis M, Reuben K, Harry E.