U8 One Tournament St Georges Park
Cast your mind back to late June (when England were halfway through their glorious toils in Russia) but more significantly for the club – this was the last competitive set of games or tournament for the U8 Lions, (now U9 Lions).
The club were kindly invited to participate in the One Tournament, a leading national competition, bringing teams from all over England together, to play at the Home of the National Team…St Georges Park.
Against this splendid backdrop and super impressive facilities – the U8 Sheen Lions team took to the task in hand well, where despite losing the first game (1-nil) – to side from Coventry, we went on to beat teams from Stoke, Grantham, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool in the other group games.
It was fair to say, the squad of 10 all contributed to play some fast, quick, attacking football, where in one game of 15 minutes, we managed to score 6 goals against one team, who just couldn’t get the ball off the Lions….in full throttle. This helped our all important goal difference and mean’t we qualified for the semi-finals to play a strong side from Manchester – whom we beat 2-1 in a closely fought, nail-biting tie.
So, out of the 12 teams from all over the country we were now in the final against a leading Liverpool side… LN2. Again the team worked very hard and we managed to sneak in a fine 1-nil result, in a very close game.
Proud to say, we won our first cup, in only the second tournament we’d played in competitively. On a sporting note, I was proud of how the Lions comforted the losing side (you forget how young they are sometimes!)
The team collected their silverware and celebrated here ..
Ironically, on leaving St Georges, we bumped into the team from Coventry who humorously laid claim to the fact that as they were the only team to beat the Lions – they’d won the tournament !
A few of the dads celebrated hard with a shandy in the local pub in Burton on Trent before the team headed back off on their 128 mile trek back to London – with a smile on our faces and first trophy in the boot.
It was a great way to end the season and super result for the team and proud parents. Now for this season ..
Thanks Coach Chris and Damian
Chris Lowe
