Wilden Village Youth U12 2 vs 1 PS Olympic U12 South

Tough game but not much between both sides. On this performance you'd never know the huge difference in the league positioning but winning last week has given us the belief that we can compete in any game.

Playing second in the league after last week's result was always going to be tough, but you could tell from the warm up that the boys were determined to put in another performance and not take any backwards steps, and this transferred to the game.

The first half was cagey, the pitch seemed to sap all life out of the ball for both teams and the stop start nature didn't help either. Constant chirping from Wildens coach and players did the ref no favours, in a game that was relatively clean.

Second half was similar, they definitely took the game to us a bit more but we were still comfortable. 2 goals from set pieces was unfortunate, earlier in the season our heads would have dropped but that didn't happen today. The work we've done to work on the mentality of the team has been key to the performances we've put in, exemplified by 2 players chasing the keeper down in the last minute so Finley could firstly win the ball then rifle it into the top corner.

Today's game was always going to be difficult, the pitch was small, the opposition whiney, the wind, especially second half, the ref having to deal with all of this.

We've said many times that the boys are improving each week, would we have been disappointed about this result a couple of games ago? Probably not, but its a positive sign of where we are now and for that the boys should be very proud, myself and Martyn certainly are.

We've not had much luck this season but the last 4 or 5 games has given all of us real optimism going into next season.