U9 - vs Notts Casuals vs Ilkeston

Written by: Tim Hawley
Checked by: Lisa Henderson

An away game against Notts Casuals always has the same traits

1) Thinking I’ve got lost in a housing estate en-route and have fat fingered the wrong postcode into the Sat Nav
2) Wondering if I’ll get the car grounded and stuck like a see-saw on the bridge
3) A special microclimate of rain / cold every time we play

It was great to see 3 teams all playing and everyone getting a good amount of game time today. It was great to see the teams all gelling together and working well as a team rather than an over-reliance on a few key individuals to hold the rest together that we saw in the casual side. We saw lots of quick play with the team spacing out nicely in both defensive and attacking maneuvers. Lots of noise coming from the team to try and self-organise which was effective in getting down a number of tries. I think the cold ground and mud were a bit of a barrier initially for people to take a tackle and slip down the legs to bring play to a stop, we saw a number of free rides up and down the pitch. As the game progressed and most had experienced “first mud” we saw effective tackling that kept Casuals and Ilkeston in the right half of the pitch. We saw some good tactical play too with well-placed maneuvers on the touch line to turn play over. I think it is fair to say that Newark put in a great show, looked like a well-drilled side and most importantly it looked like everyone really enjoyed themselves (in spite of the usual weather)

I’ll let our coach Matt have the last word. As we were leaving he said, “ well the report should be easy, We nailed it – Boom!!”