14th Mar 2020 Mens 7th v Airedale 3(Away) 0 - 3 loss
Development 7s 0 - Airedale Development 3
David Abbott’s young development team were again given a lesson in how to play unselfish hockey against a complete and well organised Airedale side which contained not one single senior player. Their passing is a credit to the coaching staff of Airedale and those players that took to the field.
They had a huge amount of energy, and moved as a team, so they were always overwhelming us or overloading our defences; and they won almost every 50:50, and often picked up our passes.
Rhydding had senior players David Habin (who worked tirelessly throughout), Rob Hatfield, Fiona Dix, and Johnnie Roughton supporting the Development Team along with skipper David Abbott. Going in at half time 0-1 down to an own goal, hopes of picking up something from this game was a big ask but tried they did. Johnnie Roughton pushed into the gap left in the centre of midfield for most of the first half, Hatfield tried to salvage something with exceptional passing, Keira Sykes worked very hard in midfield. Sadly we struggled to get the ball through to our two main forwards in Aidan Fraser and Thomas Oates.
Benjamin kept successfully tackling their midfield (he gets better every week), Alex (MOTM) demonstrated great energy and skills on the right and never stopped running, Caleb kept pushing their midfield on the left and right.
Airedale scored two further goals which their passing truly deserved. The tackling from all the young players from Rhydding was very good, winning a lot of balls, but rather than pass the ball there was a tendency to knock the ball forwards onto an Airedale stick rather than do the basics of stop, look up and pass.
Josiah did an amazing job keeping the score down to only 3, without his skills it could easily have been 6 or 7 down.
However, this was an unusual loss for a good Rhydding team, it was simply tough to come up against a very well organised opposition. Positives to take from this: our development team kept going to the end, not one of them let their heads drop; and when it was just one to one they showed that they are a skilful group of youngsters.