Westfield Youth FC

Westfield Youth’s decision to stretch themselves this year after going on tour in England each of the last 4 years winning 3 out of four and coming r/u in the other proved to be a massive sucess. They went to Holland to enter the Haarlem Cup (Coca-Cola Cup) the biggest youth tournament in Europe and due to different age criteria abroad had to play up a year in the U16 tournament. The competition had thirty teams from 10 different countries with initial group games over two days and played on fabulous grounds deciding the top ten teams to play the major cup the others going into the shield competition. ‘Field playing some great stuff won all their group games without conceding a goal thus progressing into the main competition of two groups of five. The winner of each group was to meet in the final, again they were in great form coming through some very testing games winning all four without conceding. The final on the sixth day of tough competition was against New Rochelle Tigers from New York. ‘Field started very strongly moving the ball fluently against a side the looked more like bodybuilders and athletes than footballers. Soon it became apparent why they too had reached the final without conceding a goal, their massive defenders dishing out some harsh treatment with the referee looking too weak to intervene, their strong arm tactics leading to Sam Black being carried off after 10 mins with a broken collar bone. That challenge that should have lead to a straight red card anywhere in the world was met with no more than a word. It was not so much these tactics that disrupted ‘Field’s play more the referee’s inability to deal with it. Their feeling of being hard done was further compounded when an American kicked out at a ‘field player off the ball who was then sin binned for pushing him in retaliation. New Rochelle scored their goal in this time (their only chance of the game) and try as they might ‘Field could not break down the huge packed American defence. Manager Vic Locke said he was very proud of his team’s display over the week. In an exercise planned to strech the side reaching the A final was a bonus and massive achievement by all the players who were a credit to the club and should be proud of themselves. As for New Rochelle a very strong team, who had obviously had had a massive input of physical training and coaching they were superbly drilled and had every trick in the book of cynical play. It was felt they had forgotten one small thing namely playing the lovely game of Football! (No not Soccer)