Boys U16 (2010) Major 1 - Arlington AFC

Thanks to all the lads, and Matthew from U15 for putting in such an effort on Saturday.

We knew it was going to be a tough day. We only had 11 men so no-one was going to get subbed off for a rest, and Arlington had 23 and were going to swap their whole team at half time.

Arlington are the league leaders and we played them on the 9th of Nov, losing 3-0 in a game where some of our players weren’t fired up and we were too passive receiving our own passes.

For the last two weeks training we’ve focused on attitude and intensity, with drills where the lads competed for the ball and didn’t give up if they didn’t get to it first.

We also practiced heading, running off the ball into space and calling to let the man on the ball know where they were, scanning for teammates, and passing back to team-mates when receiving the ball with back to goal - and then spinning past the defender (instead of trying to turn when not knowing who’s behind us).

Pre-match we talked about attitude and intensity, about how we had to keep our shape and be hard to break down - without running ourselves ragged.

The difference between this game and our last was like night and day.

When Jamie Beresford was in right-mid and Oscar in left-mid they both worked their socks off getting back to help out the defence. I don’t remember Arlington getting in behind and crossing from either wing, and a stand-out play was Jamie jockeying all the way back to the corner without diving in, doing a well timed (and crunching) sliding tackle to dispossess their winger, then scrambling to his feet before calmly scanning ahead and passing up the line.

Our attitude and intensity was immense. Oscar got clattered in the first 5 minutes, but battled on. He got clattered again in the second half and had to come off for a moment, then charged back in.

Kyle, Tony, and Conor all put their heads to the ball, in defence and attack … and apparently it doesn’t hurt as much as they thought it would. :)

Some of our football was outstanding, playing around and through Arlington. The lads worked as a team, calling to each other for the ball and running into space to give each other options.

Arlington scored 3 times from corners and once from one of our own kick-offs. That’s two areas for small technical improvements we will practice on this week. They only scored once against us in open play, a testament to how well we kept our shape and defended.

We had plenty of chances and their keeper kept us out with some fine saves. Fionn had another cracking save low and to his right that he pushed passed the post.

Conor got our two goals, one where a nice pass put him through and he could use his pace to go 1v1 with the keeper. His second was from following in on a blocked shot and he managed to head the ball over the keeper. Following in is something we’ve been practicing as well, so it was great to see this result in a goal.

The result was 5-2 to Arlington and we’ve a few drills to work on this week in training.

Our football was great, but most impressive was the character every single one of the lads displayed, all the way till the whistle.

Play like that without conceding corners and from our own kick-offs and the results will come in their own time.

Well done lads.