Year 7 Progress in West Midlands Cup

KINGS NORTON BOYS SCHOOL 4 – 4 GRACE ACADEMY SOLIHULL (GAS WON 4-1 ON PENALTIES)

Yesterday afternoon the Year 7 Team started their journey in the West Midlands Cup with an away fixture at Kings Norton Boys. A difficult first round tie was made even more challenging by an hours journey resulting in us not having any time for a warm up. Not a great start, but things could only get better. I was wrong. Inside the first 20 seconds a mix up between full back and goalkeeper led to a misplaced back pass leaving their centre forward with and empty net to walk the ball in to. Despite the setback the boys stayed positive and showed great character to level the game at 1-1, ten minutes later when Evan Spink rose highest at a corner to head the ball home. Captain for the day, Warren Woodvine, then scored an excellent individual goal by beating three defenders before slotting the ball into the bottom corner. This took us into half time winning 2-1.

A frantic second half saw Kings Norton level the game from a corner. Again the boys showed great resilience and took take the lead for a second time when substitute Dean Youlden fired home to put us back into the lead, 3-2. The scoring was not finished there however as Kings Norton responded again to make it 3-3, before Warren Woodvine scored his second of the match and surely put the cup tie to bed making it 4-3 with two minutes to go. Unfortunately not. With literally the last kick of the game Kings Norton levelled the tie again at 4-4 after some sloppy defending. Penalties loomed to settle the tie.

Four fantastic spot kicks from the Grace Academy Boys finally led to us winning the penalty shoot out, 4-1, and we deservedly march on into the second round. A terrific performance full of character and resilience.

MAN OF THE MATCH: OLIVER BERGIN