After the initial ISA tournament was cancelled in November last year the boys have been eagerly waiting for the rearrangement of the event. The day finally arrived on Tuesday March 7th and the squad, Miss Smirles and I boarded the coach with great excitement. The group games began at 11:00am and, as the saying goes, we were consistently inconsistent, winning 3, losing 2 and drawing 1. This gave us 10 points in the group and therefore narrowly missing out in a place in the top group by a single point ( even more frustrating as the game we drew was to the eventual winners of the whole tournament and we were 2-0 up at one stage). Areev and Ibrahim were our most consistent players scoring the majority of our goals during the group stages.

And so on to the next round of games where we were in Group B playing for 5th place. The first game was against a team we had lost to 3-1 during the previous group phase, but revenge was ours as we outplayed them and walked away 3-1 victors. We then played our second Group B game against a very strong Crescent team, but again we managed to see them off 2-0 and so if we won our last game we would have finished 5th out of 16. The game was an end to end affair with our competition going 1-0 up before we took a commanding 3-1 lead, only then to make it difficult for ourselves by conceding again to make it 3-2. But our blushes were saved as we managed a 4th goal to win 4-2 meaning a 5th placed finish was secured. Areev, Ibrahim and Mahdi were a constant threat all tournament, Chester was strong and commanding at the back, Neil grew in confidence as the tournament progressed in goal and his distribution became more accurate and Asad chipped in with the final goal of the tournament to cement our place at the top of Group B. A great day was had by all the boys and they deserved to finish the day victorious.

Mr Whichello

Tuesday, 7 March 2023