Everything you need to know about our Under 13's football team
Onslow FC Under 13s - Season 2006-07
End of Season Report
Well it was certainly a testing season, but ultimately one where we’ve shown a great deal of character and in my humble opinion, grown up as a team and become better for it. Yes, we still make schoolboy errors, but I suspect that’s because we’re schoolboys! However, we’ve gradually begun to erase these and become a tight knit team who are difficult to break down and can score against any opposition.
To finish 7th in the Division was a tremendous effort, heads could certainly have dropped and players might have wished to be elsewhere on training evenings and match days, but not a bit of it. The enthusiasm and willingness to play shone through. The highlight of the season, had to be the away win thrashing of the champions elect immediately after the Christmas break, when we played them off the park. The biggest disappointment was instead of this boosting our confidence and going from strength to strength, we did the complete opposite and lost seven on the spin, a tough run of fixtures didn’t help mind.
We await the fate of the League to see which Division and opposition we’ll face next year, but whether higher or lower I’m sure we’ll be competitive. We’ll need to find a replacement for Elly, our goal keeping custodian for the last 5 years, who’s nipping down the road to Canada, but there seems plenty of interest from within the team for donning the gloves, unfortunately mostly from our only two prolific goal scorers! We wish Elly and family all the best and will certainly keep emailing the match reports to keep them posted on our progress. Sam also assures me he’s convinced a couple of defenders to sign next year permitting him to move into midfield and stop him from bending my ear, we’ll have to see.
Thanks to Graham, Jim, Duncan, Nick, et al who have helped out with training and running the line, the loyal supporters and chauffeurs and the long suffering Mrs P for not missing me for the months of August through to June. Have a good summer and see you next season.
Another season dawns and we are in good heart, a cup proudly gathering dust on the windowsill and the team looking a good bet for the Division title after narrowly missing out on promotion. All squad members from last season are present and correct plus a couple of prodigal sons back in the fold, Jake returning home, Michael Owen style after failing to make the big time in Singapore and Mat heeding his parents advice to re-sign in order to claim the double family discount on the registration fee.
Training sessions are going well and all is set fair for the season, then in the week leading up to the first fixture you receive one of those emails you wish you hadn’t – one of the teams in the Division above has dropped out and volunteers are sought from the Division below for belated promotion. My response was, to say the least, muted, along the lines of we’d rather not, but if no one else volunteers, we’d abide by the decision of the League. Within 5mins of pressing the send button, I get back ‘Congratulations, you’ve been promoted to Div 2’ – gee thanks. So instead of looking forward with a fair degree of optimism to the league season, we now feel we have a battle on our hands to survive and to add insult to injury – can’t defend our cup as we’re now in the Senior Cup. Still it wouldn’t be life at Onslow if we weren’t playing up hill with the wind against, one man short and a biased ref – character building they call it!
