U16s Perform at Tournament
Posted by on 30 May 2018
On Sunday Old Wulfs sent an U16 team to the 11 a side Walsall tournament for the first time.
This is a high standard tournament with opponents from Barford, West Bromwich and the Black Country county side. 
We had Cyril and Ryan from Finches and Luke from Cannock to bolster our numbers, but with two late cry offs we had a bare 11. Jack, Cyril and Luke were the back three in front of Dan in goal. Archie, Callum, Josh, James and Alex were in the middle with Ryan and Paul up front.
The first game was against Barford and for some of the boys this was a step up in standard to their normal games, but we gradually settled in and started to play some good hockey, eventually getting on top and taking a deserved lead through a short corner strike from Callum. We then sat back thinking the job was done and produced a scrappy period of play giving the ball away time and time again, finally conceding a last gasp equaliser.
West Brom were next and a very strong side but the boys put in a fantastic performance dominating the game from start to finish, however numerous chances came and went, and we conceded from a fast break. After more chances were missed and another goal was then conceded, we were very unfortunate to not be awarded a blatant penalty when the ball was kicked off the line by a West Brom defender. One of the best performances from a young Old Wulfs team in a long while meant that the eventual 2-0 defeat was something of a travesty.
Taking into account the other results we needed to beat Black Country by 4 goals to be guaranteed second place. We started slowly but the continual requests to get to the far post paid off as James tapped in from Archie’s through ball. Archie then remembered where the goal was and scored one himself. Cyril, Luke and Jack were also defending well and breaking forward to create chance after chance.
2-0 at half time and in the second half, the midfield stepped up the pressure, with Callum grabbing a fine individual goal and James tapping in at the far post to make it a deserved 4-0 final score. 
So a fabulous day with all of the boys steadily improving the team performance game by game. Second place earned them some nice trophies as you will see in the photos. Thanks also to Chris Nightingale for umpiring.
