The ‘Alfriston Primary School Football Tournament’ is in its second year and was set up as a ‘post SATs’ event for Year 6 students. East Hoathly were invited to take part and as we are obviously a small school Year 5 children were also invited to take part.
Ten teams were invited and were divided into two pools of five. East Hoathly started well, winning our first match 1-0.
The team were tested early on in the second match as they went down 0-1 to an early goal but they fought back and won 2-1.
They continued to play well for the next two games winning 3-0 and 4-1 which meant that they finished top of their pool and were through to the semi-finals.
They faced Lewes Old Grammar.
Obviously as the team had now progressed through to this stage the opposition was becoming tougher and they went 0-2 down. However, once again they all kept their heads up, encouraged each other and worked as a team to come back and win 3-2.
We had made it to the final!
We faced the hosts, Alfriston. The game, between the two best teams on the day, was always going to be tight and this certainly was the case with the score 0-0 at full time. With no extra time at this level of the game, it was straight to the (dreaded) penalties.
A nerve racking end to the game for both teams and, of course, for the goalkeepers and the penalty takers.
It was a proud moment for them all, including Mr Lawrence (the new Gareth Southgate) and Miss Purcell (who I thought was going to faint under the pressure of a penalty shoot out) as we won 4-3.
There were, obviously, some amazing individual performances on the pitch but it would not be right to highlight them because this was a team effort and all in the spirit of East Hoathly School ‘Vision’.
Reported by Mr Skelton (Matthew and Harry’s Grandad).
