Tournament played at Outwood Grange School, Sunday 24th September. Slazenger’s U10 Boys A team had a storming start in the first of six Yorkshire Youth hockey league tournaments to be played during the 2006/7 season by winning our first game against Rotherham 3-1. Issac Fisher tapping the ball home for the first after a blistering run by Sam Dransfield from well inside his own half. Minutes later Sam’s brother Ben Dransfield made it 2 when he found space in Rotherham’s D and drove an attempted clearance in to the back of their net. Sam netted the last of our three before Rotherham secured a consolation goal close to the final whistle.
As far as scores are concerned this is where the good news ends. An obviously well experienced team from Bradford HC really turned on the style with a well drilled demonstration of hockey, plus some outstanding individual performances to beat Slaz 4-0. The score line would have been substantially worst without some strong defensive play by Ralph Toon and Jordan Pickles. Due to shortage of numbers in the Kirklees and Doncaster squads the same Bradford players again put in excellent individual performances against us after being “borrowed” by those two sides. Slazengers loosing both games 3-0 and 2-0 respectively. An absolute new comer to Hockey, Connor Thwaite, came close to creating a goal for Slazengers in the game against Doncaster with a long distance strike towards goal which Issac Fisher couldn’t quite catch to give it the necessary touch before it crossed the goal line. Slazengers played the final game of the day against Sheffield without one of our stronger players, Sam Dransfield, due to injury. Although not reflected in the score line it was a more closely fought affair. Harry Lumb battled extremely hard in an attempt to break through the Sheffield midfield and take the game into their half with success on a number of occasions, unfortunately none of these resulted in goals for Slaz. The three goals Sheffield managed to put away came after persistent pressure on our defence resulted in free hits and long corners, set pieces which Sheffield converted in to goals.
Slazengers have also entered a B team in the league this season. Last season we started without sufficient players to run two teams but by mid-season we had. Therefore, for this outing, we fielded a team of 5 girls and two boys some of which were playing in their debut tournament. All team members enjoyed the run out and managed to win one out of the four matches they played, this being a 2-0 victory against Chapletown’s B side. Goals scored by Rebecca Jessop and the second from Ellie Spruce or Holly Joyce who stuck the ball together, neither of the Girls sure who stick the ball came off.
Results for the other games were a 1-4 defeat at the hands of Chapletown’s A side, Holly Joyce netting after a fine pass from Ellie Spruce, a 0-3 loss against Halifax, and the last game of the day against Bradford’s B side this was close game that ended 1-2 to our opponents, Rebecca scoring her second goal of the day for Slaz. Despite the results for both A & B teams Slazengers young squad, many of which are new to the sport, can be proud of the performance they produced and look forward to better results as many of them gain experience throughout the season.
Report by Alan Perry
