Category: Clubs

4 teams played last weekend – their results were as follows:
Under 15’s
Cornard 2 – 3 Bergholt Heath
(B Flower, B Rout, R Evans)

Under 14’s
Bergholt Heath 3 – 1 Holland FC
(A Bartlett 2, T Hodder)

Under 13’s
Great Bradfords 12 – 2 Bergholt Heath
(J Dixey, T Youngs)

Under 10’s
Brooklands 0 – 1 Bergholt Heath
(L Bloomfield)

Our final pre-season tournament took place in Stanway in a special invitation event. This was a mini league with the winners being the team who amassed the most points. We had a poor start losing to the eventual winners Lexden Saints in our first game, not helped by some poor refereeing. Awarding a penalty that looked to us like ‘ball to hand’ and leaving one of our defenders down injured and crying on the edge of his own penalty area, the referee only stopped play once Lexden had taken advantage of the situation by scoring the second and final goal; this was despite players and managers of both teams asking him to stop the game! An apology afterwards by the senior official on duty at the tournament was scant consolation!

The boys picked themselves up for a draw and two wins from their other 3 matches, finishing third in the final table, which was a disappointment having come second this time last year – so no squad photo with medals to show on this occasion!

To read about our other two summer tournaments you can find reports at:

• Colchester Villa Tournament;
• Tiptree Minors 5-a-side Tournament.

Two of the four age groups had their first league matches of the 2008-9 season on Sunday.

• The U-13s lost at home to Team Player Youth 16-0 in the “C” league;
• The U-14s also lost, though more narrowly, away to Cornard Dynamos Yellows 2-1, also in the “C” league

Next Sunday 21st sees all four of our teams in action for the first time this season:

• U-10s are away to Booklands (Weller League West)
• U-13s are away to Great Bradfords (C league)
• U-14s are at home to Holland FC – kick off 12 noon on the Poors Field (C league)
• U-15s are away to Cornard Dynamos (A league)

For full data on the Colchester and District Youth Leagues please visit their website.

The second of our summer tournaments saw us enter 2 Under 9s teams into the Tiptree 5-a-side tournament.  In 2007 we had entered one team only as a pre-cursor to our first season as Bergholt Heath, and had won the U8s age group. This season, as all the boys were available, we decided to keep them all happy by having 2 squads of 6 – drafting in a couple of extra players to supplement our normal squad of 10.

Luckily the two teams were drawn in separate groups and both managed to get through into the semi finals.  By luck, as both finished second we were also kept apart in the semi finals (winners of each group playing the runners up in the other). The first team lost in their semi final but the second managed to win and ensure we had a Bergholt Heath team in the final for the second year running.  They went on to play the team the others had lost to in their semi final, running out 2-1 winners having gone a goal down, Matthew James scoring the winner!

This was the first of 3 summer tournaments entered by the team, and was organised by Colchester Villa.  Most of the boys played for Villa at U-8s before we decided to set up a team for this age group within Bergholt Heath – and this was a late invite to replace a team who had dropped out.  The tournament actually took place on the very day we had pencilled in for the start of training! Therefore we set off to Highwoods Sports Centre on Saturday 6th July without too much expectation as the boys had not played together since April.

The tournament included teams from a wider geographical region than the Colchester league, including teams from the Woodbridge, Ipswich and Chelmsford areas. Highlights included our first ever headed goal in competition, scored by Jamie Bowden Vs Wivenhoe ,and James Hirst scoring a wonder goal to win the semi final Vs Springfield, winning the ball on the halfway line before weaving his way past 4 players and coolly slotting the ball into the net with virtually the last kick of the game!

The final against Maldon Town was a tense affair with the boys not surprisingly looking decidedly tired. It finished 0-0, going to a penalty shootout. After the first Maldon penalty had struck the post, Antonio Sabini coolly slotted the ball low into the corner, resulting in joyful celebrations by the players – much to the surprise of the parents who thought this was slightly ‘over the top’ for the first penalty – the shootout was ‘sudden death’ and we had won the tournament!