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UniTed's Blog
Hi! I'm UniTed, mascot of the Under 13's Adders team. With Bubbles moving up to be the under 11's mascot I'm also moving up to become the under 13's mascot - it's all change!! Also changing is the make-up of the team as some of my previous Adders are playing in the Vipers team this year, so I have a few new members in my team.
My full team line up is: Charlie Botting, Connor Botting, Jocie Greenwood, Luke Latham, Kier Maeers, Guy Osborne, Max Osborne, Alice Osborne-Luck and Joe Upton. Charlie, Connor, Jocie and Joe have played in various teams for several years while the others all played in teams for the first time last year.
This season the Adders will be playing in Division 1 of the Eastern Counties league and in the Southern Counties league. Hopefully some of them will also be picked to represent the club in the National Cup. Last year my Adders team won the under 11 Southern Counties league and some of them were also in the winning Southern Counties team at the inter-regional tournament and hopefully we can have some success again this year.
As with previous seasons I'll be reporting from all of our matches to let you know how the team get on.
Once again my paws are crossed for an enjoyable season.
We travelled up to Peterborough for our second tournament. It started half an hour later than we were expecting but we later found out that the times had been changed. If only we'd known, we could have had a bit longer in bed!
Our first game was against Kings Lynn and Alice was our captain. Kings Lynn were a big and strong team and unfortunately we stuggled to contain them. Despite Guy's best efforts in goal they were scoring about every two minutes. Luke, Max and Alice did manage to get some passes together near the end of the half to break into the Kings Lynn half but they weren't able to score and we were 8-0 down at half time. We let another goal in at the beginning of the second half but then Jocie, Connor, Joe and Charlie worked hard at their box defence and managed to stop Kings Lynn scoring for five minutes, but as substitutions were made the goals started going in again and although Max had a couple of shots on goal at the end we lost 16-0.
Our next game was against Bury who were playing as the guest team at this tournament and Max was captain this time. Although the Bury team were not physically bigger than our team they are all very experienced. We played the first half almost entirely in defence with only a couple of chances to get into the Bury half but with no opportunities to score. However, our defence was getting better and we only let in six goals in the first half! The second half was better especially when Max scored two and a half minutes after the restart after a great run up the rink. Although Bury then pressured our defence for the rest of game Max, Jocie and Connor were all getting up near the Bury goal, unfortunately they were unable to add another goal to our total. We finished the game losing 12-1.
Our final game was against Peterborough and they only had four outfield players; Jocie was our captain. We played much better in this game; although there were still many demonstrations of inexperience at this level the team were starting to work together. Peterborough were down to three players for a few minutes after a collision, Alice and Max both tried to take advantage but couldn't beat the 'keeper. Luke, Connor and Charlie also had shots during the first half but better defending meant that we were only down 3-0 at half time. Peterborough scored immediately after the break but Connor, Luke, Jocie and Max were trying to pull the team back into the game with a number of shots. However, it wasn't our day for scoring and we lost 6-0.
Although disappointing to lose all three games the team were improving as the day went on. Hopefully their Saturday morning training sessions will help them to work more as a team and by our next tournament in December we will see some better results. I also noticed that a pattern had formed with our scores: we let in the same number of goals in both halves of every game! Perhaps I can start predicting the full time scores half way through the matches next time! As the match against Bury was a friendly we are given a win for that game so we have our first points in the league table and are now 6th. The Vipers were also playing at the tournament and they won two matches but lost to Kings Lynn; they remain at the top of the table.
UniTed's Scorer: Max (1)
UniTed's Player of the Tournament: Guy - for some excellent goalkeeping to keep the scores fairly respectable.
Our first tournament this season was our home tournament at Soham. Unfortunately, due to prior commitments, we were missing our three players with the most experience in Eastern Counties, so we roped in Jocie and David from the Under 11's team to help out.
Just like our first season in the under 11's league the Adders first match was against the Vipers and the result was much the same. This time they beat us 14 - 0 so we didn't get off to a very good start!
Our next match was against Peterborough. Luke scored our first goal of the season but eventually we were beaten 9 - 1. Next we faced Cottenham and, although we didn't score any goals in this game, at least the scorelines were getting closer - this time the result was 7 - 0. Our final match saw us playing Bury. Luke and Max both scored and for a while the match remained level at 2 each but eventually Bury pulled ahead to beat us 8 - 2.
It was a disappointing start for the team but at least there is only one way to go from here - up!! Once the new Adders have spent some more time playing together as a team I'm sure the results will improve. We have our next tournament next month and who knows, maybe I will be able to report on our first win.
Having lost all our matches, it means that we are at the bottom of the table but there are plenty more matches left to improve on that! The Vipers had a much better day, winning all of their matches and they are at the top of the league.
UniTed's scorers: Luke (2), Max (1)
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