Our last game of 2008 saw us make our first visit to Cricklade. We ended up taking seven players through one reason or another. However those seven did us proud.
The team talk before kickoff was to focus on our positional play; this should in turn help with us to pass the ball to players in space. Cricklade made this hard for us to do this with their compact style of play. The first half started well and we were ahead within Five minutes Joe squeezing in a long shot. Ben and Joe continued to link up throughout the first half with valuable contributions from the rest of the team denying Cricklade a shot on goal. We finished the half 5-0 with Joe completing his hat-trick.
The second half started with a few slight changes in position and the players being encouraged to get a few more passes going and calming down when in possession. This started happening and the goals started to flow, with most of the goals coming from good build up play and passing. Jack W made a great improvement on his positional play and was rewarded with a good goal from a powerful shot. Our team work continued to show and hat-tricks followed for Regan and Alex and 4 goals for Ben. Had it not been for the Cricklade goal keeper the score would have been a lot higher.
Overall, a very good end to the year and a good platform to build on in 2009.
Final score: Elite Soccer Coaching F.C. 14 – 0 Cricklade F.C.