A damp Sunday morning saw the Romsey U10s (Marcus, Sebastian, Theo, Jake, Lewie, Tom, Freddie, Toby and Benji) take the field at Haselmere for the Hampshire U10 In2Hockey Tournament. It was set to be a very long day, as there were five 12 minute group games and then, if we progressed, a semi-final and a final. A possible total of an hour and a half’s hockey, on half sized pitches, for boys who are mostly 9.

The first problem was to find a willing recruit to Goalkeep. Coach Carl eventually persuaded Lewie and more importantly his parents that it was an excellent position to play in (apparently unlike everybody else, he had actually tried it once before!) Of course he would be swopped into the outfield after 2 games. Needless to say this didn’t happen, as a) it took so long to get the kit on b) there were no other willing volunteers and c) he seemed to be enjoying it. Lewie performed heroics all day. He deserves high praise, for most of the other teams had goalkeepers who had trained all season and yet you would not have been able to tell that it was only Lewie’s second time. In seven games he was only beaten twice.

In the midfield the team was bolstered by Marcus and Sebastian who had come down from the U12s to play in their own age group. There were several rather unfair comments from opposition coaches and parents, who should have known better, about grow bags and “playing against 14 year olds.” It does have to be said that Marcus is exceptionally tall and strong for his age, but that’s not his fault! Because we knew there would be penalty corners and possibly flicks, he and Sebastian had practised a simple penalty corner routine (knicked from a Trojans Friday night training session!) which we were looking forward to trying it out.

First up were Fleet and Ewshot. Romsey were in control most of the time and the goal count would have been a lot higher if the Fleet goalkeeper hadn’t made several exceptional saves. Eventually though pressure told and Marcus scored two well taken goals. On Fleet’s one attack Lewie showed that he is also surely a fantastic footballer by kicking the ball from his D to far corner of the pitch. Final score 2-0.

After a great start we had to face Trojans, who we knew had a good team and indeed this was a tense game dominated by the midfield. Romsey though had more of the attacking play and the Trojans goalkeeper did a great job, making several crucial saves. Our rotating defence of Freddie, Tom, Toby and Benji were unbreachable and in the end Romsey were unlucky not to score or win. Final score 0-0.

The Trojans result bolstered all our players confidence and coach Carl and assistant coach Richard Lake decided to rest Marcus for the beginning of the next match v Fareham. The rest of the boys played extremely well with Sebastian controlling play from the middle of the field and after a mazy run into the D he shot from an impossibly tight angle and the ball cannoned off the far post into the goal. After the game he admitted he had been trying to cross to Jake who was taking up great positions in the D all day without any reward. A couple of minutes later Theo burst through the Fareham defence in typically robust fashion, (his Mother says he’s a rather good rugby player) and blasted home a second. Final score 2-0.

With Sebastian rested for beginning of match 4 against a strong Yateley team, Romsey found themselves under a bit more pressure than they were used to and despite some heroics from the defence we went 0-1 down after 5 minutes. With Sebastian subbed back on Romsey scored their best goal of the day. Marcus dribbled into the right side of the D and fired a ball across the goal where Sebastian diving full length and one handed, deflected the ball with his reverse stick into the net. Unfortunately he was then injured and in the confusion of trying to sub him off, Yateley scored a second. Despite maximum effort from everyone there wasn’t enough time to reply and Yateley ran out as narrow winners. Final score 1-2.

Our last group game was against Andover and anything less than a win would likely see us out of the competition. This spurred everyone on and Marcus recovered his scoring touch at just the right time. After several attempts the much worked on penalty corner routine was successful and with

Romsey doing most of the attacking Marcus managed to grab a well deserved hat-trick. Everyone played excellently in this one and at the final whistle there was really no doubt that we would be heading for the semi-finals and as it turned out with the added bonus of topping our group by one point. Final score 3-0.

By now the boys had done as well as was expected and most of them were pretty tired. Our semi- final was against the runners up of the other group Petersfield. Petersfield were, as you would expect a very strong team and this was a close game, but with 5 minutes gone Marcus dinked into the D and put away a great shot. This left Romsey with 7 of the longest minutes of theirs and their parents lives to defend, as Petersfield piled on the pressure. But everytime it looked like Petersfield might make a final pass through the defence to an unmarked attacker the last Romsey boy put in a fantastic block. Benji, Freddie, Tom and Toby all made crucial last ditch interceptions and in the dying seconds when Petersfield’s best attacker did get through one on one with the goalie, Lewie pulled off a tremendous point-blank save. Final score 1-0… and we were in the final!

By the end of this match the boys were pretty much dead on their feet and at this crucial moment, Jake, who had been taking up great attacking positions all day, was whisked away by his Parents to a pre-arranged lunch, depriving us of our main upfront target man.

To make matters worse the opposition were Alton. They hadn’t lost a game all day and indeed hadn’t conceded a single goal. The only positive was that the Alton boys were as equally tired as ours and this showed in a rather scrappy first half, where there were very few chances for either team, although on balance of play Alton probably deserved to be ahead. One of the most encouraging features of the previous games had been our width, but in the final our play was becoming narrower and narrower.

Luckily unlike the other matches the final was two eight minute halves. So at half-time there was a very stern team talk from the unimpressed coaching staff. “Heads up – You are all tired but there are only 8 minutes to go. stay in your positions and talk to each other!”

The boys came out firing in the second half and after two minutes the decisive moment arrived. It was a bit unfortunate, as it resulted from a momentary misunderstanding in the well drilled Alton defence. The neutral umpire awarded Romsey a long corner from the halfway line, but despite her clearly saying 3 times it was a long corner the Alton team thought they were facing a short corner and all but two went to stand in their goal. Sebastian took the ball to the halfway line and then using a bit of initiative immediately dribbled straight towards the Alton goal. Rounding two defenders and oblivious to the coaches screaming “pass pass” he dribbled into the D and smashed the ball towards the Alton goal. It bounced back, luckily straight to him and his second shot crashed into the backboard. 1-0 but 5 minutes to go. Romsey were hanging on with Tom doing some great dribbling down the left wing to relieve pressure from the Romsey goal. When Alton did mount a serious attack Toby was there to “take one for the team” a crunching blow to the knee. One of the opposition parents commented on how brave he was and after a quick check up he was back on the pitch. Theo muscled Alton’s playmaker off the ball at several crucial moments and Freddie and Benji stood firm. With much shouting and nail shredding on the touchline the hooter couldn’t sound soon enough and when it finally did, the score was still 1-0.

Romsey were champions and we all agreed they thourghly deserved to be, with the entire team making vital contributions at crucial moments. They are now through to the South of England finals at Surbiton Hockey club May 6th, which we know will be extremely tough for them and a big step up in standard. But whatever happens, it should be excellent experience for everyone who goes.

Romsey u10 girls travelled to Haslemere on Sunday for the Hampshire IN2 Hockey tournament.

The girls made an excellent start in their first match against Havant after a couple of minutes Romsey went 1-0 up when Hattie latched onto a good pass from midfield and shot the ball past the keeper. Romsey then extended their lead further with a superb diving shot from Hannah which saw the ball go wide of Havants keeper into the back of the net, the third goal came from a short corner Harriet injected the ball into Hannah who then passed the ball to Zoe on the right post whose shot rebounded off the keepers pads and onto Harriet’s stick who then slotted the ball home.

The next match saw Romsey face Aldershot and Farnham it was an end to end game with impressive defending from Tilly and Lucy some great saves from Ellie and really good runs up the wing from Zoe and Harriet making good crosses into the D for Imogen and Hattie to shoot. Romsey were unfortunate not to take the lead and the match finished 0-0.

The 3rd match was against Yateley; again another end to end tense game with great defending and attacking. Ellie made her best save of the tournament as she dived to block a shot from Yateley; in the process she injured her knee and had to sit the last 5 minutes of the game out. Romsey also managed to clear the ball off the line to keep the score line 0-0.

The final match of the afternoon was against Andover. Romsey dominated the game with a succession of short corners, one of which resulted in the ball finding the back of the net but was disallowed because the ball hadn’t gone out of the D. Romsey continued with further pressure and were unfortunate to finish the game without scoring; another 0-0 result.

The girls had a superb tournament and although they were undefeated in their group and hadn’t conceded a goal they missed out on progressing to the semi final by 1 point.