Match Report

Dunton Dynamos 0 - 13 Thurrock "A"

U11 League - 3rd February 2008

Against the league leaders, this was always going to be another tough fixture. It didn't get any easier when two of our key players pulled out through injury / domestic commitments. On top of this, our superstar goalkeeper reported he had five more weeks until the plaster could be taken off his broken foot. And just to make matters even worse, Dave failed to show as he'd got the wrong start-time. Our ten men therefore lined-up for the kick-off knowing they were going to have to work extra hard to keep the Thurrock side at bay.

The match itself was played on a bright afternoon in early-February. The pitch was once again in very good condition considering the amount of recent rain we'd had. Thurrock won the toss and elected to kick-off.

The team played in a new 5-3-2 formation, albeit without the second striker. James played in goal, deputising for the injured Liam, with Jack, Harry, Billy, Jordan and Cameron filling the defensive positions. Billy took the role of swepper behind the back four. George, Ben and Calum played in the three-man midfield with Luke up-front on his own.

Thurrock won the toss and elected to kick-off. Within seconds, we found ourself a goal down. A poor clearance out of defence was latched onto by an opposing attacker who dispatched the ball onto the bottom corner of the net. Despite this early set-back, Dunton continued to battle well, and managed to keep the half-time score down to 4-0 through a combination of good defensive organisation and some great saves by James.

Early in the second-half, Dave arrived to join the team. The damage was however already done and the Dunton players all looked shattered through having to chase the game for the first thirty minutes. The Thurrock side grew increasingly confident and were scoring almost at will.

By the end of the game, Thurrock had scored thirteen goals inflicting our heaviest ever defeat. The Dunton team were soundly beaten by a better side but nonetheless worked hard throughout the game under difficult circumstances.

Man of the match today was James who kept the score down through some excellent saves. Billy also played well in his new sweeper role. As a team we just didn't gel today with a number of players obviously out-of-sorts. Clearly the players are becoming disheartened a losing matches each week. We'll organise some confidence building friendlies in the next couple of months to get the team ready for life in a lower league - life in the Premiership is too tough for us at the moment!

Our thanks go to the Thurrock side for a demostration of arguably the best football we've seen at this age. Thankfully, we won't be playing them again this season having met them four times already in league and cup games.