Oaklands Football Team
Football tournament 2007
In January a school team was entered in to a nationwide tournament, our particular area section being organised by Reading FC. The tournament in our area is now so large that it had to be split into 3, one in
The tournament was organised into 5 leagues with winners and 3 best runners up progressing to the knock out stages. Our league consisted of the Grove, Westfields, St Pauls, Binfield, Wildridings, Farley Hill and Harmans Water.
In the first match we played against St. Pauls school and played very well, creating numerous chances but failing to take any. The final score stayed at 0-0 and our goalkeeper never saw the ball, showing how much we dominated the match. We then played Westfields and continued to attack and dominate the match, though this time we did score and ran out worthy winners 1-0. Our next match was against The Grove and this was a very close game throughout with both teams creating chances, though neither managing to make any count, so the match resulted in another 0-0 draw. Wildridings were the next team we played and once more we attacked from the start and put them under pressure, scoring one goal without reply. This left us in a very strong position to progress with 3 matches left,though these were probably going to be the hardest.
We then played Harmans Water and though we played well we conceded our first goals of the tournament and lost 2-0, some of the fault must lie with the Manager for team changes! This meant our next match, against Binfield, was crucial to our chances to progress. We had to win! The game started promisingly and we attacked and attacked all to no avail, failing to score, and then the opposition broke away and scored in the last few seconds of the game, leaving us undeserved 1-0 losers. This meant we had almost no chance to progress when we played our last game against Farley Hill. This time the boys managed to get the success they deserved and we ran out winners 4-0.
The eventual winners of the whole tournament were Binfield and they gave credit to our team for being the hardest opposition they had played.
The tournament was also noteable for the arrival of Steven Hunt, the Reading FC player and the Match of the Day cameras, who arrived to film for a programme BBC are doing on sport in the community and chose this one as it was one of the biggest in the country.
Great credit must go to the whole team who played with a lot of skill and even more enthusiasm and they were of great credit to the school.
Team: Luc, Stephen, Michael, Ryan, Joe, Bradley, Charlie, Andrew.