Under 12 A squad victorious at Ridgeway Tournament
28 Jun 2008
Battling Team performance wins Champions Final!
An early Sunday morning start but all 8 players were raring to go. We had 4 tough group matches v Jarvis Brook (2-0), Hastings Town Reds (2-0), Chipstead FC (0-1) & Sevenoaks Town Rovers (1-1) with the top 2 teams going through to the quarter finals.
With results going our way we progressed as Group D runners up teeing up a quarter final encounter with Rusthall A. Having already beaten Rusthall A in the Langton tournament a few weeks ago the team was confident of getting win but they knew it would be tough... they weren’t wrong. After soaking up the pressure in the first half Foresters started imposing themselves on Rusthall a who must have wondered why they weren’t 3 or 4 up but the gutsy performance of Ed Stocker in goal along with George & Philip in defence. Then came the only goal of the game, a short throw by Ed to Ollie, a simple pass down the line to Mirkan who put Christian through and a quick turn away from his markers then shot hard & low into the bottom left of the goal. Once the final whistle went we had to remind the boys that there were still 2 more games to win before we started to celebrate properly.
With TWells FC beaten on pens, our next opponents were Hastings Town A in the semi final. This game was an entirely different match with Foresters A taking the game to Hastings Town with shot after shot raining in on the Hastings goal mouth. Eventually with pens looming Christian spun away & let fly a powerful drive from just past the half way line which the keeper couldn’t hold & the ball dribbled into the net. More pressure should have brought more goals but Foresters comfortably held on for a 1-0 win.
Onto the final, we were due to play our hosts – Ridgeway. Again with the semi final Foresters started extremely well scoring in the first few minutes. Excellent play from the back, Ollie hit the pass of the day, an excellent cross field ball (left to right) to Tom Beck who skilfully finished low under the advancing keeper into the left hand corner. Foresters should have added to their goal tally but couldn’t find a way past the Ridgeway keeper. Ridgeway also tried to get back of level terms but were prevented by some excellent team defending & superb keeping by Ed. When the final whistle our excellent support & players were ecstatic.
After such a tough season they thoroughly deserved the victory. Well done also to the addition support of other players & parents who stayed to cheer us thru both semi & final.
Overall an excellent mornings work conceding only 2 goals & scoring 8 in the 7 matches played.
Scorers – Christian – 4, Mirkan – 3 & Tom – 1. MOM for the tournament – Ed.
The squad for the tournament was as follows:- E.Stocker, P.Archer, G.Chambers, D.Cheek, M.Yerlikaya, T.Beck, O.Muggeridge, C.Rutherford
