Match report

Match report

When our U10s reach the (surely inevitable?) stage where they are in contention for places in their respective national teams, they will find themselves playing with players who are adversaries any other Saturday. England’s goal-scorers in their triumphant Euro 22 final team were Ella Toone and Chloe Kelly of Manchester United and Manchester City respectively – players who, after the joy they experienced on the pitch together at the weekend, will go back to being bitter rivals at club level when the regular season starts. On the flipside, Lina Magull, who scored in the final for die Fußballnationalmannschaft der Frauen, was pitted against Georgia Stanway, her future teammate at Bayern Munich.

It is fair to say that the aforementioned superstars of the game are unlikely to experience the full joy of Saturday’s noon kick off with our U10s. Their elevated status, playing in front of crowds of 90-odd thousand people, mean that they are unlikely ever to deal with the amount of mud that our U10s encountered. It wasn’t clear that we would even be able to get a game as a 9.30am pitch inspection indicated that there was a lot of mud on the modified pitch. A further pitch inspection at 11.30am revealed that there was still a lot of mud on the modified pitch, as well as a lot of mud everywhere else. Even the bits of pitch that looked like grass were actually just mud with a cunning disguise. Fortunately for the ground staff, our kids significantly reduced the amount of mud on the pitch by taking it home on their boots, socks, faces and in their hair.

Despite the difficult conditions our kids had a load of fun and emulated the "national team" experience playing in different configurations with some of their teammates and some players from the red team. There were several moments that looked awfully like football, albeit with a bit more mud. Even the ref, who is renowned for his grumpy demeanor, was persuaded to let the teams play an extra few minutes before calling time on the whole thing, just because of how much joy was out on the pitch.

Back to normal next Saturday with the blue team facing Stirling Districts in the noon kick-off at Woodside and the red team have an early start with a 9am kick-off at Birdwood. Having said that, “normal” might be a bit of a stretch because about 20 percent of the modified pitch is currently in various laundries and on back doorsteps around Woodside. “Blue” and “Red” might even be a bit of a stretch at this point – it’s probably safer to say that Woodside U10 Brown will back this coming weekend…