A Comment From the Coach After a Tournament

First and foremost you should all be very proud of the way the boys handled themselves during the tournament.  I was especially pleased with their determination,  team work and camaraderie  - in addition to the obvious skill they all displayed.  Everyone played an important  part in the success of winning SSC’s first trophy.    Given the relative size of SSC we did remarkably well.

As we do not have a club room to speak of we need to decide how to handle the “silverware” – most likely I will ask Nick Magnus for a display area in the entrance/foyer of Dulwich College.  I understand that not all players attend Dulwich but as this is our home ground for the moment it will let everyone that comes to SSC on Saturday morning see the trophy and photos.  Will advise further on this.

Overall we played four games, winning 3 and losing 1.

Summary of the results (as best as I can remember)

DC-2 vs SSC                L     7-2
SSC vs KJ                    W   12-1
SSC vs Korean School    W    6-3
DC-1 vs SSC                W    5-4

Final Standings (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw)

DC-2                10 points
SSC                 9 points
DC-1                7 points
Korean School    4 points
KJ                    0 points

The game in which we lost was against the eventual winners (DC-2). This was also our first match and it took our guys some time to adjust to the small field, the 5-a-side format and tactics. The 7-2 score line was not a true reflection of the game.

We can take some comfort knowing that the two DC sides (DC-1 and DC-2) each had a number of over age players, which after some discussion was confirmed by tournament organisers.   I voiced concern on behalf of SSC at this and we have been assured this will not happen for other tournaments.   Having said that all of our guys played very well and were not intimidated by some of the older boys.

The 5-a-side format meant that we were not able to give everyone as much playing time as they may have liked.   For future tournaments this will be less of an issue as we will playing either 7-a-side or 11-a-side.

I would like to thank those parents that attended for helping to organise the boys and providing the sideline support – and also thank Eero for preparing the team for each game.

Please note that we have been invited to another tournament on Oct 11th and details will be sent out shortly.  This will be the first Saturday after the October holiday period so coordination will need to take place via email.

The International Tournament is still scheduled for Oct 18-19th in Shanghai so we have a busy program ahead of us.

Johan will be coordinating on behalf of U12.

Thank you for the support.