1st Year Futsal Competition (November-2014)
1st Year Futsal Competition
Friday 14th of November 2014 at Irishtown Stadium
Group one: St. Mary's (Cabra), Margaret Aylward Community College (Whitehall), Our Lady of Mercy of Mercy College (Beaumont) and St. Tiernan's Community School (Dundrum/Sandyford)
Results: St. Mary's 1:1 Margaret Aylward
St. Mary's 0:3 Mercy College
St. Mary's 2:1 St. Tiernan's
St. Mary's squad:
Riema El Ali, Paulina Kriksciukaite, Linda Mc Donagh, Blessing Ononaojoh (Captain), Robyn Quigley and Vanessa Bita.
We played three matches against big schools with bigger squads. The girls played in their first competitive outings. We trained together only twice the previous week and we were up against strong teams with plenty of players in their squads. We have 6 girls in our squad; the other schools have 10 to 12 players per team. They can rotate the players more often than ours. It was a testament to our team for their endurance and strong team spirit.
First match, we drew 1:1 against Margaret Aylward, Robyn scored the first goal early in the game. She played great and ran up and down the pitch to help out in defence and forward. We defended well but we conceded an unlucky goal towards the end. The girls played well with Linda, Riema and Paulina in defence. They worked very hard as a team. The girls were very happy to get a point from the first game. We were ready for the second game.
Second Match, we lost 0:3 to Mercy College, a very good team and they were one of the favourites to win the tournament. We lost concentration in defence and gave away silly goals. Vanessa played superb in goal and kept the score down. She made one great save of the highest standard that drew applauses and praises from the referee and the opponents. Robyn and Blessing missed great chances to reduce the deficit. We were very disappointed but we promised to improve for the next game.
Third Match, we won 2:1 against St. Tiernan's. We played for second place in our group. It was a tough and hard fought match. We were 1:0 down and our team fought back with fine goals from Robyn and Blessing. Blessing beat few players on the way and scored the last goal with the last kick of the game. We were so happy to finish 2nd and just missed out in the semi-finals by goal differences. We went to Mc Donald's and the girls had well-earned meal and drinks. Well done and keep up practising for the next competition.
Captain's Report
I was happy to play football and was wishing that my team would win and come first. It couldn't work that well but I am still happy that my team tried. We played well, we scored goals, but we lost one match. We drew first match 1-1, we lost the second match 0-3 and we won the last match 2-1. I was lucky to score at the second half of the last match. We were all happy and lucky.
Blessing
