UNDER 11'S DOMINATE IN PRE SEASON FRIENDLY

.

In scorching conditions the team played its first pre-season game away in Stowmarket and put in a tremendous performance, particularly given the fact that we could only muster 11 players, so all boys had to play 60 minutes of football in very draining conditions. The most encouraging thing was that Heathy and I were largely redundant with the boys automatically taking up sensible positions and passing the ball well.

Woodbridge dominated the first 15 minutes with Caspar Church outstanding during this passage of play. Despite some excellent possession football we did not score and had to rely on keeper, Emile Burgoyne, to make an excellent save when Stow countered. However once Jack Christie opened the scoring so did the floodgates and Aaron Thurlow scored a first half hat-trick with some excellent runs from deep. However the goal of the half was scored by Robbie Stephenson. He hit an exquisite volley from Aaron’s cross after some good work by Jack and Kieron Marshall. Right on half-time Stow pulled a goal back somewhat fortuitously as Emile’s kick was clearly handballed and then put in by a player in an offside position.

The second half began with what was probably our worst period in the game and Emile was called upon to come off his line on two or three occasions to snuff out the danger, but once the defence settled again Stow were never ever back in contention and more Woodbridge goals followed. Robbie added two more to complete his hat-trick, Jack added his second and Khaled Abdel-Aziz and Matty Read scored their first goals for the team. Matty was as tenacious as ever and is making the Makelele position his own, which is not only providing protection for the back line, but also giving Aaron slightly freer reign.

This was a very encouraging performance by the team as a whole. However it is also worth noting that there was an impressive debut from Miles Kekwick at left-back and Ashley Archer also had a very solid game at full-back. Ben Hopkins was again very strong at the back. He not only reads the game well, but is beginning to marshall the rest of the defence too.