Hampstead FC v Harvesters South

A poor performance from the U13 South team in the early kick off fixture, resulted in a 6-0 defeat away to Hamstead FC on a sunny November morning.

Half term often throws up some strange results in the league and unfortunately for U13 South, we were on the receiving end of a footballing lesson from an average team, with one exceptional player who looked like he should be in an Under 15's team (I did check his card carefully!). The event started strangely for me, as the white board at Chase Lodge (Mill Hill) suggested we would be playing on a full size adult pitch with full size goals, which is where we started to warm up. The opposition arrived, ignored us and walked straight over to a tiny 9-a-side pitch on the far side of the site, which incredibly was where we had to play, including dilapidated 9-a-side goals, 7 yard centre circle (normally 10 yards), a 13 yard goal area (normally 18 yards) and a parent referee. Needless to say, the game was very compressed with 22 players on an 18 player pitch size which made it easy for their huge number 10 to win the ball and run straight through on goal at least 3 times, scoring twice and hitting the post on the other occassion.

In these playing condensed circumstances, Harvesters needed to be sharp, quick to make decisions and have a great 1st touch in order to move the ball before the hoards of opposition players desended on the player in possession but unfortunately, having to have a week off last week due to availability of players and only having 6 at training for the last 2 sessions, South players were far from sharp, very rusty and chasing shadows for most of the game. Late night gaming played its part in the poor result, with several children admitting to have gone to bed after midnight on Saturday night before an early kick off, which was evident during the warm up.

In stark contrast, Hampstead were used to playing on their small pitch, they had played last week despite losing 10-1, and so they were quicker to react to everything all over the pitch, winning the majority of personal battles. Goals were evenly spread, 3 per half and Harvesters failed to have a single shot on target and never really coped with the central midfield battle or in defence where the majority of the action occured.

A game to forget and hopefully we'll get back to training with a full squad and sharpen up for the late kick off against Edgware next Sunday.