2016/17 FG Presentation Day & Academy Summer Tournament

Another glorious summers weekend and it was spent entirely football related. Friday night Brandon was at his Chelsea Foundation, then Saturday was our annual FG presentation day and then to end it all off today Brandon’s team was playing in the Academy Summer Tournament.

 

The presentation day was fun, this year the club did not really organise any specific activities like the fun day last year or the Chelsea coaching the year before. Instead all teams had a pitch allocated and could just spend the morning having a bit of a fun event and a picnic amongst your teams. We had real fun with some rounders, sucker bow archery, bin kick challenge and parents versus kids football match.

 

For Brandon’s team the presentation was a bit of a nightmare for me as all the kids have done so well this season that it took me something like 6 weeks to decide the 3 awards after changing my mind multiple times. You could easily argue strong cases for 2 or 3 or of the kids for each of the awards. I love seeing the excitement and anticipation on their faces as the awards are called out, but equally I hate seeing the faces of the kids that didn’t get an award. This year I decided on Lewis Williams for Managers Player, Ashton Lewis for Clubman Award and Joshua Smith for the Most Improved. We also gave a special 4^th award to Freddie Drew for being the top goal scorer on the team for 2 years running (although the others are really catching up on him now and he needs to up his game next season to keep that record going!).

 

Joshua’s presentation day was unfortunately a bit of a sad event in my opinion as his old team has now effectively folded due to the poor management/coaching which I previously mentioned. So a few of the team turned up to receive their end of year awards but we deliberately didn’t include Joshua as the coaches are not deserving of shaking his hand and giving him his annual trophy. So instead Joshua joined Matt Temple’s Puma’s team who he has been training with and Matt kindly presented Joshua with his end of year award.

 

The Academy tournament today was just awesome. The U8’s have not been playing 7v7 for long but they have adapted and picked it up very quickly. Today they were playing some really great football and at times were unplayable as they were getting their heads up and passing the ball so fluently and efficiently.

 

Brandon unfortunately had an off day as he had a high temperature, a knee injury and has not been eating very well. So he only really played 2 halves of two games. Overall the team won 3 games and had a very close 1-0 loss in the 4^th. The game we lost the boys just got complacent and never really played to their potential. Suddenly we went back to 7 individuals rather than a team!!! Not really sure why thee kids switched off but on 9 out of 10 days we would have beaten this team. On the plus side if we can only lose 1-0 in a game where the team completely switched off then I’ll take that. During the course of the tournament we only conceded 2 goals and scored 9, so a very good goal difference as well. Bring on the next tournament in 2 weeks time.

 

 

2016/17 FG U8 Tigers with me and David Farmer all receiving their end of year trophies.

L-R : Kye, Brandon, Lewis, Charlie, Connar, Joshua, Freddie and Ashton.

The kids always want to do a silly picture!

 

Joshua joining Matt Temple's Puma's to receive his annual award.

Me and my boys with their annual trophies.

Brandon felt rough at the Academy tournament today but still deserved his medal for a good team performance.

 

So proud of these boys, they have come such a long way and have really adapted to 7v7. Can't wait for next season. Finished the Academy tournament with a 3W 1L record.