Match Report - LICKHILL COLTS YOUTH U12 RED - 14 Dec 2025

A much improved performance against a team that is in the top half of the league.

We asked the boys to be more focused, and more aggressive on the pitch and they did exactly that. From the first minute you could see they were up for it, attacking every second ball, closing down space and getting forward when they could. The formation suited us well, it gave us more in defence and attack, but the work rate was the main reason we were competitive.

In the second half we started to get a better foothold on the game, we passed the ball better and made runs into the channel to start attacks. One of the reasons we moved to a crowded midfield was to give the defence a break, rather than having to stop wave after wave and this worked well.

We need to keep this mentality up, this will give us more time to work on passing moves and set pieces in training, helping our attackers to learn each others games.

Another point of note, its been a tough season for the boys, we can say that results don't matter but its not been fun for them. Credit to the boys for keeping their heads, continuing to support their teammates throughout the game and pushing till the very end. It could have been easy for heads to drop after the game but they could see the improvements. I said in last weeks report that we probably deserved to lose 8-0 based on the chances and mistakes but we can all be sure that this was a much tighter game than the final result against a team 5th in the league.

The boys now know they can perform like this, know the work rate required to compete and should have the confidence to take this performance and continue to improve after Christmas.