HBHS Junior Colts Take on Hillsdene

In Winter Tournament Week, the HBHS Junior Football Colts team made their way across the Kaimais to Tauranga to defend their title in the Hillsdene National Tournament.

We had a great start to our campaign, with two comfortable wins.

Later that day was when we knew the going would get tough, because we had to face St Patrick's College from Wellington.

For a good three quarters of the game, we saw ourselves up 2-0, but with a few mistakes we ended the game at 2-2. This meant that on day two if we wanted to top our group, we would need two wins.

The morning came around fast, and after a 9-0 win in our first game we would face our neighbours, St John's College, later in the day. A draw was enough to see us make the quarters, and a win would see us top our group. Unfortunately, once again, in game that was ours to win we couldn't quite get there and had to settle for a draw. This meant we had to play Palmerston North (now favourites to win the tournament) the next day in the quarter finals.

We knew that this would be a tough one and only ten minutes into the game, disaster struck! A red card was issued to us, and this meant we were a man down for the entirety of the game. We were down 3-0 with 15 minutes to go. We battled hard and managed to score two goals, but in the end, we fell short of our target and failed to qualify for the Top 4 playoffs.

We ended the tournament in 8th place after our final two games finished in penalty shoot outs which both resulted in losses - scores consisting of 4-2 and 4-1.

I can say, as captain of the team, along with Mr Wilkinson and Mr Marrow leading from the top, we had a wonderful experience and can all walk away feeling proud and thankful for the opportunity to represent HBHS at National level.