News

 

The Merton SSP held the annual Yr 5/6 Girls Soccer 6s Competition on Thursday 1^st December at Joseph Hood Recreation Ground in Raynes Park. The competition consisted of 16 teams, made up from the 4 top teams from each of the clusters events (Wimbledon / Morden / Raynes Park / Mitcham).

 

The format for the competition started with group qualifiers (4 teams per group) with the 1^st/2^nd place winners entering the “Cup” Tournament and the 3^rd/4^th place entering the “Shield” Tournament.

 

All schools showed great passion and tactical play throughout the group qualifying stages with some great goal-keeping especially demonstrated by Liberty/Hatfeild/ St Thomas as these 3 schools didn’t concede a goal. However some schools were on form scoring goals galore, especially Haslemere’s striker who scored a hat-trick in one game.

 

Results after qualifying stages

 

 

All schools that finished in 3^rd / 4^th position were entered into the “Shield” Tournament. The quarter and semi-finals consisted of some good football again with no goals being scored, resulting in penalty shoot-outs during both rounds.  One of the quarter final matches must have broken a record for the most penalties taken during a partnership event between “Poplar” and “St Marys”. Poplar came through on top with a score of 17-16 goals. The Shield Final was between Poplar & Garfield and after an intense game Garfield scored a late winner to become the Shield Champions

 

 

The top 2 schools from each group qualified into the Cup Tournament.  The quarter finals resulted in Hatfeild and Bishop Gilpin winning their games and going straight through to the semi finals. However the other 2 quarter finals were not as easy and resulted in a penalty shoot out.  Morden beat Haslemere to go through to the semi finals along with Benedict beating Liberty on penalties.

 

The semi finals looked like both matches were going to end in penalties but Benedict scored with seconds to go beating Lonesome 1-0 and securing their place in the final. Bishop Gilpin and Morden both worked hard to move the ball up the pitch in attack however both teams were not able to finish their chances resulting in yet another penalty shoot out to decide which team went through to the Borough Cup finals, which Morden won.

 

The Borough Cup Finals was between Benedict and Morden. The ball was well worked from one end of the pitch to the other with some great shooting from both teams either going wide or being saved by the keeper. After the 10min final whistle, yet again the winners needed to be decided upon penalties. Penalties are a harsh way to decide a game; however a winning team needed to be decided! It was Morden that became champions, yet again on penalties, best of 3 penalties, final score Morden 2 Benedict 1.

 

Thank you to all the schools for taking part in the competition. Also a big thank you to the Rutlish year 10 boys for assisting in setting up the pitches and refereeing all the games. The boys used were both experience and qualified referees and did a superb job. The competition was a great event; however the size of the goals (recommended size for that age group by the FA) will be reviewed for future competitions as ideally we wouldn’t want as many penalty shoot-outs at the next event.