Salisbury Hockey Club was hosting the U10 tournament on Sunday 10th February. Romsey turned up with an 18 strong squad and the coaches decided to split the teams into Girl versus Boy heavy teams getting them extra practice for the upcoming IN2 hockey tournament. Romsey A was a seven boy and one girl strong team: Maggie, Joe, Ben, Charlie, Oscar, Dylan, Benji and Otto. First match out of five was against Winchester. Romsey started strong with fast dribbling up towards the goal and Dylan scored an early first goal for Romsey assisted by Ben and Charlie. Joe did his first match as a goalie in full kit and managed to withstand Winchesters many shots towards the goal but after a longer battle in front of the Romsey goal, with good defending from Maggie and Oscar, Winchester finally managed to score, and the game ended 1-1.
In the second match Otto was putting on a Southampton bib to make up for their short number of players and he did that with the honour. Romsey had decided to play without a goalie and that played a part when Southampton scored an early goal. Romsey woke up and started to pass much better but despite that Otto managed to score with a lovely straight shot and 2nd goal for Southampton. That triggered Romsey and Oscar played out the ball with his best golf swing that travelled all up along the left side to Ben who then had a successful pass to Dylan who netted the ball and 2-1. Charlie was then up for a fast run with the ball and nice row of passes to Dylan and then onto Joe, who managed to even out the goals towards 2-2.
Third opponent was Bournemouth, which Romsey opened with a quick goal from Oscar and within minutes after the first one he was able to run with the ball again and shot a lovely ball into the corner of the goal, giving Romsey 2-0 lead. Then the games changed and Bournemouth played out the ball and had some successful passes through our defence and into an empty goal and short after that another set of passes from Bournemouth that travelled faster than the Romsey players could run, making it 2-2. Romsey came back with a series of great passes between Oscar – Charlie -Dylan that only just went outside the goal post. Joe had another near goal before Bournemouth over took the game again and scored two goal just before the whistle blew, finishing the game 2-4 to Bournemouth. A raffling and fast game which kept both players and audience on our toes.
The fourth and fifth games were against Salisbury A and D. Joe scored 1-0 assisted by Oscar. Salisbury then had a shot that we thought might be outside the D but was refereed as a goal. Before end of time Romsey scored another goal and game ended 1-2.
In the fifth and final game, Benji started by hitting the nail on the head and fend off the first attempt to a Salisbury goal and after that Romsey showed great teamwork and lots of great passes between each other and Joe assisted Dylan in the first goal. Romsey kept the control of the game and Oscar delivered a nice ball to Dylan, who then assisted Joe to 2-0. Ben had a nice passing from midfielder Otto and Oscar and managed to run with the ball along the side line and score final goal 3-0.
The Romsey supporters were being shown some brilliant hockey from very keen children. As the last game was played the sun came out and warmed us all up and the children could have gone on forever…. Star of the day must go to Maggie for stepping out of her comfort zone and getting stuck into the matches as the sole girl in the team. Well Done Romsey A.
