Stockport Lacrosse Club Juniors: U12s Away Day in Yorkshire

It has been a couple of years since we last played over in Sheffield, and you forget how good their facilities are, with a fantastic 3G Astro, and great clubhouse. We wanted to use this game, to introduce as many of our new players to a game at U12s, and although disappointed to only get 9 players, we were delighted to have 9 fantastic lads willing to give it their all. Moving 3 of our lads up to play for the U14s at Cheadle. Debuts were given to Sam, and Joshua B, and when you consider 3 other lads were playing the 4th game ever, one could say we were travelling with an inexperienced team. Due to Sheffield also having an inexperienced team, this decision lead to a very even contest, and certainly made the decision a good one as it was an excellent game, thoroughly enjoyed by all the spectators.
Sheffield very kindly gave us a player for the full game, Matty, to make it a 10-a-side game on a small pitch, with a couple of referee's who wanted to let the game flow. We started with an experienced keeper (Jay), and a strong spine down the middle of the field, and an attack line of Thurston, Sam and Matty, we managed to get a 1-2 lead at the end of Q1. Our Midfield were working very hard, with lots of running coming from Jacob and George. Q2 was a different story, with Sheffield growing in confidence, finding some good passes and some good goal scoring opportunities gave them a 4-1 quarter leaving us trailing at half time.
We were always going to change the keeper at half-time, as not only was Joshua making his debut, he was desperate to play in goal for the 2nd half and made a couple of great saves. With Jay coming out of goal, and a strong midfield of Jacob, George and Wil we managed to use some of Jay's strength, and the others energy to get us back in the game with a 2-4 quarter and going into Q4 we were evens. As the game was close, the importance of the face was there for us all to see, and with all the guys (Jacob/George/Jay/Wil) doing well at face, we managed to gain possession more times than not and went on with a 1-4 quarter. Leaving the final score a victory of 8-11.
5 Different scorers today, Wil, Jacob (4), Jay (2), George (3), and our Sheffield debutant Matty.
Massive thank you to our hosts, and a massive thank you to the parents who made the journey, albeit going was only 1 hour, coming home was well over 2 hours for a 36 mile journey - Oh well.