Cranleigh Prep Football Festival

Last Friday the Year 4 ‘A’ Football team spent the day at Cranleigh Prep School. The sun was shining and Chelsea Football Club were organising matches and training for the 16 schools in attendance. Graeme Le Seaux gave all of the children an inspiring talk before the game with some interesting Q&A. It was then into lunch for all of the teams.

After a hearty lunch, the boys were ready for action. The format was four groups of four teams. Only the winning team from each group would go through to the finals where they would play another round robin. Each match would only last six minutes so it was so important not to concede an early goal. With seven players on a small pitch scoring was going to be difficult. In our first game we smashed in six goals in six minutes against Wonersh & Shamley. In our second game we drew with The Roche School 1 – 1. We dominated the game only to concede from a kick on. The Roche also drew against Holy Trinity Guilford and it was now up to us in the last game to win the group against Holy Trinity and progress to the finals. We played some wonderful football with Hector turning on a magic five minutes. He was everywhere. He was ably supported by Basil and Dom with his outstanding finishing. We won 2 – 0 and progressed to the finals.

Waiting for us in the finals was our old nemesis Eaton House The Manor, The hosts Cranleigh Prep and last year’s winners Cranleigh Primary School. We drew 0 – 0 against Eaton House in our first game. We also drew 0 – 0 against Cranleigh Primary. Unbelievably, all of the teams in the group were drawing their games. The last two games of the day would determine the result of the tournament. An unfortunate deflection saw us concede a goal to Cranleigh Prep and we lost the game 1 – 0. Eaton House had to beat Cranleigh Primary by 2 goals or more to be crowned champions as they hadn’t scored a goal yet in the final stages. They could only manage a 1 – 0 victory over Cranleigh Primary, which gave the hosts victory by a goal difference of one.

The Finton boys were great ambassadors for our school and played some fantastic football. Equal 3rd place out of 16 schools was a pleasing result.