On Tuesday 26th March, St Edmund’s Prep U11A football team travelled to Thamesmead to represent Hertfordshire in the ESFA South East England finals. We were placed in a group of four, knowing that only the top team went through to the play-off stage to decide who would qualify for the national finals.
Our first game was against St Peter’s (representing Essex county). We were caught off guard by the intensity of our first opponents and were finding it difficult to get out of our own half for the first part of the game. After a while, this pressure told as the opposition were pressing relentlessly and forcing is to make errors. In the end, they made their pressure count and scored the opening goal. We couldn’t find an equaliser and found that their defence was very well organised and limited us to very few chances. We lost this first game 0-1.
Our second game was against St Mary’s & All Saints (representing Buckinghamshire county) and we knew that we would need a result to have any chance of progressing. In this game, we had the majority of the possession and were attacking the opposition goal throughout. We were very unlucky not to score, despite having several chances to do so and also hitting the post. This match finished 0-0.
Our third and final game was against Thorndown (representing Cambridgeshire county). By this stage, we knew that we were just competing to go out of the competition with our heads held high. This game was quite end-to-end. We were caught on the break a few times as we looked to try and score ourselves. On one occasion we gave away a penalty, but our super goalkeeper pulled off a great save to keep the levels tied. Afterwards, we had a great chance to score following a break through the middle of the pitch…but we hit the post and let our opponents off the hook . Immediately, the opposition broke and scored as we lost our final game 0-1.
At the end of the tournament, our boys received their medals for representing Hertfordshire county. We are very proud of every one of them for their achievements in reaching the final stages of this nationwide competition. Well done boys!