Our first match for the U14s was at home to Fareham on a sunny but chilly morning. Unfortunately, Fareham are struggling for players so we had to play 10 aside and lend them 2 players each quarter.

A huge thanks to all the players that stepped in and stepped up to support with this without making a fuss at all. We welcomed a few new faces to the team and a special mention to Molly and Percy playing their first matches.

After a bright start, stringing some nice passes together the unthinkable happened and we conceded a goal to go 1-0 down. Thankfully, the team didn’t panic and after a few minutes started hitting its stride.

Goals soon followed with some great dribbling and slick movement all over the pitch. Fareham had a few stronger players who put up a good fight and it needed communication and teamwork to keep them at bay.

The use of quarters to break the game up was good and enabled regular words of encouragement and time to make team and positional changes.

In the end Portsmouth walked home 7-1 winners with goals from McKenzie (3), Nathan (2), Jasper and Percy.

All in all a great start. It will be much stiffer rest next week when we play Gosport as they won their first match 14-0 last week! Tackling practise planned for next Saturday!

A huge thanks to Lee and Veck for umpiring and doing a great job, and also using the new buzzer system to support Zack, which seemed to work very well.