Another friendly again out of town and this time it was a journey into Cheltenham to play in a four way 11 a side mini tournament. The four teams consisted of ASC Youth, Southside Athletic U13’s & U14’s and Slimbridge Utd.
In our first match we were drawn against Southside Wanderers U14’s, who we cruised past 5-1. This was another very good performance, carrying on from last week’s stylish display.
Aaron opened the scoring after some good combination play from him and Josh. Then Aaron turned provider to set up Joe E after a good individual run. Curtis showed his alertness to pull off a great save to deny SW the chance of getting back into the game before Josh combined with Joe E, who scored his second of the game with a bullet shot from 25 yards out. Soon it was 4-0 when Ciaran tucked away his shot after another well worked corner. At this point we relaxed a little and conceded a very sloppy goal, but soon came back with Josh scoring from Perry’s through ball to make the final score 5-1.
Final score: ASC Youth 5- 1 Southside Athletic U14’s
With Slimbridge beating SW U13’s in the other semi final, this meant ASC would play Slimbridge - who finished second in the Cheltenham League last season - in the final.
Within two minutes of the kick off Joe E made a storming run forwards before playing a slide rule pass through to Kezza 1-0. Then Aaron jinked his way past 3 players before pulling the ball back intelligently for Danny to net. Joe again turned provider setting up Aaron to make the score 3-0 and Joe also had a hand in the fourth with another rasping shot which Kezza followed up after the keeper made a good save. When Josh’s powerful shot came back out to Perry he made no mistake and Joe E capped off a very good performance with our last goal. The down side however was that again we got caught being too casual and not concentrating and conceded 2 sloppy goals in this game, but this was probably down to the amount of changes we made in defence as the game went on.
Final score: ASC Youth 6- 2 Slimbridge Utd
Today we were outstanding again and for the second match in a row lots of players played in unfamiliar positions, which shows our players versatility. There were great performances from all our players and in particular Joe English who gave a real captains performance.