Furngate Hawks U16 vs Burgess Hill Town Juniors
0 - 11
15 October 2023 · Mid Sussex Youth Football League<br>Under 16 Division Four
Home cup match played on 15 October 2023.
Kicked off at 9:45 AM
0-11
vs Burgess Hill Town Juniors Black U16
Home cup match
With 2 players (Haris & Toby) dropping out through illness on the Saturday evening, plus players arriving late (too many to mention but at least 8) we were not at the greatest with our numbers at the arrival time. Tommy was not available after a niggle in the warm up.
So...... Although the warm up preparation was good, we were slightly affected by a bit of shifting around of the starting line up.
We started the game brightly against a team that had 9 players from the squad that won U15 Div 1 last year as Hassocks Phoenix.
It was clear to see that although we sacrificed possession, our tireless effort to chase the ball down was superb. Owen set the tone with a display of work rate and persistence without the ball that I had not seen from him before. This triggered Sami (making his Hawks debut) to follow suit.
The opponents were clearly technically strong with the composure and assurance all over the park. They had to get the ball wide to try and beat us though. Through the middle, Connor (playing a deeper CDM role) was winning the ball and moving it quciker that usual, Rio was combative and constantly breaking up play on top of the flair side to his natural game and Shak, when he got in to his rhythm was finding himself in the right place at the right time. By default, this put the pressure on G and Brian out wide and was a test of game management from the CB's and CM's on who would assist with the defending in those wide areas. Of course, you cannot keep them out for 80 minutes but we did a great job with our efforts and didn't concede until 20 mins in to the game.
Tyler was pointed out by their coach as a gifted player and I think that is really high praise. Always a top performer but needing to be supportive of his 2 CB's that don't always play there is something to watch out for. As our captain, team mates look to you to lead in all aspects and another assured performance reinforced that!! That said, Aiden & Oliver ran themselves in to the ground.
Oli Lucas made some unreal saves again. Never gonna keep out every shot but an amazing job keeping the score down. Distribution and positioning will need some further work and will be worked on at training.
With the subs coming on, Alex & Max made their own mark in the game. Working hard, forcing the press and running until they couldn't run any more was a great show of team commitment.
Well done and a really spirited effort lads. As Kaysha and I said, massively proud of the footballing side of things.
We are a united squad and we need to keep it this way. Let's focus on elevating out team mates rather than digging them out.
Roll on the next round of the plate #UpTheHawks