Martlesham Tournament 11th April 2009

Martlesham were having an exchange weekend with their sister team from France. ELS Unfortunately I don't know what that stands for :-(
It was a seven a side tournament with 10 men squads. Our squad for the day was-

Ollie S, Freddie, Matty, Dash, Will, Sam, Keiran, Curtis, Ollie Mac and Charlie B. Curtis called in sick on the day so we had a 9 man squad.
The tournament was very well run. There were three pitches and the under 12's were also playing. The first games kicked off at 9am. We played five games each and both tournaments were finished by 11.30!! All the games were 12 minutes long with no half time.

The day didn't get off to the best start for us. Our first game was against Kirton on Pitch C!! The bogey pitch!! We started very slowly and struggled to get hold of the ball. The poor pitch didn't help with playing a passing game. Kirton had one tactic which they used to good effect, basically every time they got the ball they'd hoof it up the pitch to their striker. For the first 7 or 8 minutes Sam in defence was having a bit of a torrid time. Constantly under pressure and struggling to find his feet. To his credit he settled down, got into the game and went on to have a solid tournament.
Kirton's goal came from a speculative punt forward which dipped onto our crossbar and dropped to a group of players one of which was the Kirton Striker, Charlie H. Despite having a couple of attempts to clear it we allowed him to poke it over the line. There was some debate by some parents saying the ball didn't cross the line. From my viewpoint I couldn't tell either way, as far as I'm concerned the ref gave it and he's the one who counts.
The goal seemed to wake us up a bit but with the games only 12 minutes long we had little time to do anything about it. 0-1 the final score.

Next up was the French Team ELS on pitch A!! Our favourite pitch!!! This time we started well and caused the French lads all sorts of problems. We were able to pass the ball better on the bigger smoother pitch and got our reward when Charlie finished off a good passing move down the left to fire home his first of the day.
We continued to dominate and again Charlie scored to finish the game 2-0.

It was back to pitch C to play Martlesham B team. We dominated the early stages and were unlucky not to get a couple before we gifted them the easiest of chances. Another 1-0 defeat.

Our next game was against Woodbridge who are on the verge of winning the first division. We knew we were in for a tough game. We managed to raise our game and could have won it had their keeper not pulled off three great saves. They didn't cause us too many problems at the back but again a moment of indecision allowed them to get a shot in when we could have easily closed them down and cleared it. We lost 1-0 again but had played well and deserved something from the game.

With nothing but pride to play for we were back on pitch A to play the hosts A team, who needed to beat us to stand a chance of winning the tournament. This proved to be our best game, we battled well and played a nice passing and moving game that has developed well over the course of the season. Martlesham struggled to get into our half. Once again it was Charlie B who opened the scoring for his third of the tournament.
We continued to dominate and press forward which led to Dash scoring another two to make the final score 3-0.

Despite a very disappointing start we finished on a high note and managed to string together a couple of performances which were enjoyable to watch. Man of the day was Charlie B. He battled from the very beginning and was strong throughout. He deserved his three goals.