On Thursday, 15th of September, our Years 7&8 Football team (Hugo, Sakeri, Harry, George L., George K., Daniel, Felix, May and Rayyan went to Hagley Park to compete at Centrals. Inigo, Awad and Oscar are also members of the team but weren't there for the tournament).

Central Tournament is the level above North West Zone Tournament where you compete against other schools in the wider Canterbury region. These were 5-a-side games. You get awarded points for corners as well as goals and the ref tallies them up during the game. If it's a draw at the end of the game, then whichever team has the most corners is the winner. 

 We took the bus to Hagley Park after technology. When we arrived at Hagley Park our team was a little nervous because we were playing some big teams.

Our first match was against Middleton Grange. We played pretty well and ended up winning 2-0. We were all happy with our first result and had a game right afterwards on the same pitch against St Marks. When the game started we were first to score a goal then they scored one. At the end it was a 3-3 draw but we had got more corners so we won. 

Our last game in the group stage was against Brighton and we won that as well. After those matches we were first in the group, so we got to play second in one of the other groups, which was Redcliffs.

The game against Redcliffs was our hardest game of the tournament because they had some very skillful players. In the first half we were up 2-0 but in the second half they scored two goals instantly, making the score 2-2. Their lack of teamwork made us the better team and we won 3-2 with a volley from George L. winning it.

Our quarterfinal match was against Hillview which was another hard team. In the first half we didn’t play our strongest team which made it hard so in the second half we had some subs and ended up winning 3-2.

The semi-final was where we lost our winning streak. We were playing Elmwood and we had a shot quite early on but the ref said that it didn’t go in. They then scored shortly afterward, making it 1-0. In the closing minutes of the game we had another shot at the opposition's defender and we thought it went in but the ref called no goal again, so we lost 1-0. 

We still had a chance to get top 3 though in our last game against Cashmere. They scored early in the match but we got lots of passes through to Sakeri and he scored four goals to win the game against Cashmere and come 3rd place at Central Tournament.

We would like to thank Lisa and Simon for all their efforts and encouragement in coaching us. We really appreciate it.

Written by Hugo and Sakeri