Northern Suburbs Junior Men's Hockey Newsletter

2004 #13

Thursday 3^rd of June 2004

Events Calender

Last Weekend Results (29^th and 30^th of May)

Next Games (5^th and 6^th of June)

Match Reports

Norths Under 11 Report Saturday 29^th of May 2004

This was our first game of the year where we had a full compliment of players which meant that we could rotate players when they needed a rest or a quiet word from the coach. And this worked great for us in the first 30 minutes.

Our plan for the match was to concentrate for the full 60 minutes and attack the ball when it is near you – in other words don’t stand back and wait for it to come to you.

The first half was our best 30 minutes so far. Our midfield of Luke, Drew and James again showed their skills with Drew feeding the ball forward with great hits, and Luke and James showing good skill with the ball.

Once again our defence of Anthony, Mitchell D, Tom, Mitchell T, Josh, Dan and Stevie played well for the first half. Our hitting has improved out of sight as has our tackling.

The forward line really got into the game with Matty, Cosmo, Alexe and Isaac all showing some of the skills we have been learning on Thursday nights. We forced several penalty corners and attacked their defensive zone a number of times, which we haven’t been doing previously.

Best on ground for us were:

3 – Isaac (always looked dangerous in attack).

2 – Cosmo (lots of hard work, best game of the year so far).

1 – James (showed excellent skills with the ball).

Unfortunately we couldn’t play at the same level 2^nd half and Saints ran up a score on us. At least we know we can play to the level needed, we just have to do that for 60 minutes. 2^nd half we had several chances with Isaac hitting the post and a couple of corners.

Special mention to Callum, Matty, Dan, Stevie, Josh and Tom. Callum has been filling in from the Under 9 team and more than matches it with the under 11’s. He is definately a player of the future. Our new players this year in Matty, Dan, Stevie, Josh and Tom have all come a long way in the past couple of months so stick with it kids.

Drew, Isaac and James regularly fill in for the under 13’s which is really showing in their play. They are becoming very strong on the ball. We will continue to work on that this week as well as marking players tightly and running the ball with speed.

Overall I’m happy with our improvement, now we need to make sure we play the game for the full 60 minutes. Keep up the good work kids.

Wayne Tucker

Under 11 Coach

Norths Under 13 Report Saturday 29^th of May

With a borrowed under 11'er, Drew Martin, we managed to have 10 players on the field. Again we had to play Corrie in the goal as Nick was still away. James is overseas with the Youth Choir and Aaron was still recovering from the flu.

So, at 8:00am on a Saturday we took on Kedron Wavell at their home ground.

After about 10 minutes of settling in where we forgot our lessons of two weeks ago where we took the long option far to often and simply turned the ball over and put ourselves under unnecessary pressure we finally began to use the small passes coming out from defence by going wide early.

In this first half we completely dominated by keeping the ball short and working it up on the edges of the field. Very sensible stuff. I saw many combinations beginning to take shape where we trusted each other and ran onto the passes and simply cut their defence to pieces. Tom and Drew and Jacob and Sean worked well up both flanks. Jayden, Kienan and Sean played very well, but others like Tom and Andrew had very good games. This time we kept our mistakes to the minimum and we benefited. At half time we were up by the one goal thanks to our centre forward, Michael, getting a good goal. That's good work Michael, just keep running those angles in the goal and looking for the spaces. Michael has a few chances and their goal keeper got in the way of a couple of good touches.

I didn't have much to say at the break other than “keep up the good work”.

We got another goal in the second half and by then our confidence was up enough for the team to start some experimenting with their play – some switches from right to left – need to be a little quicker and it's better if you back and around rather than straight across and we almost had a back pass too! We still concentrated on our little plays from the free hits, the one twos and we kept our head in defence. They finally scored a good goal at the end of the half but we had a deserved win – well done lads. Corrie made some good saves under pressure and the goal that we conceded was no fault of his – no keeper was going to get that.

We learned that a good small game, with good discipline and few errors wins games. The Bridge boys and Sean in particular worked very hard in attack and defence and this allowed the rest of the team to all have excellent games. While I have picked out some players for particular mention here I must stress that it is a team game and everyone had great games – some of the positioning and passing was very pleasing. It's hard when the other team has players that much bigger than us and who are intent on smashing the ball – but we showed them what happens – ie. it comes straight back at you. So don't forget the lesson, don't give the ball away foolishly. And once again – well done!

Norths Under 15 Report Sunday 30^th of May

As I was injured this weekend I had intended to stay at home but I ended up coaching on Saturday at 8:00am, then 3:00pm (to watch but ended up playing) and then a phone call to umpire a game at 9:15am Sunday followed by watching the 3:15 and 4:45pm mens games. Thissaw my weekend disappear and all my wifes plans to too.

I had the pleasure of watching and umpiring the U15's playing Kedron Wavell at Burringbah. I have noticed our results thus far this season and it's a bit ordinary but they're a good team and with Andrew they're coming along fine. Naturally their defence looks reasonably sharp, god knows, they've been getting enough practice! On occasions though they failed to put an effective tackle on and sometimes got caught ball watching or simply got caught square. The work in the circle needs to toughen up a bit but they don't panic and on most occasions they tried to work the ball out of defence. They came out of their defence well, always chosing to go wide early until the centre opened up a little and didn't make many mistakes coming out (of defence).

While they lost this game 5-1 the teams shows great potential and I am sure by the end of the season they'll get some wins. Typical 14 and 15 year olds they're not too keen on the hard work – they like the dribble and pass but not the work to effect the tackle or to force a player wide and they often dropped right off their man. If they can improve on this work ethic, in particular in the centre of the field and pick their players up sooner when they turn the ball over then they'll close down lots of the attacks they meet. They have speed out wide on both flanks and a steady player in the middle – these guys work well together and Liam can sneak a goal in the centre if he can find the room.

Kids, it's tough in the 1^st division but you can cut the mustard. You have a good team. Work harder on reducing the errors, especially the simple turnovers and be more nagging with the tackles and marking and work harder.

I enjoyed umpiring the match and watching you guys play.

Graeme Higgins.

News

Saturday Night

A wonderful evening was had. Good to see the new players mixing with the old and famous (and those infamous too). Thoroughly enjoyed by those attended and their should be more of these events.

Levies

A turf levy for all teams that play and train on artificial turf (Colmslie and Kedron Wavell/ Burringbah) will be imposed this year. The cost of the levy will be finalised and the players in the teams that play on this surface will be required to pay this levy by the commencement of the games.

Electrician Needed

We need the services of an electrician at the club house to help install a hand dryer. Please contact Sally Willington.

Norths Website

The website for the club is www.gjames.com.au/norths. Add it to your favourites. The newsletters will be posted on the site each week. Also the club is celebrating it's 30^th year and there is a lot of history and information contained in the site. Feel free to browse. There are also shortcuts to other hockey sites as well as wet weather details etc.Welcome once again to the 2004 hockey season.

Contact graeme_higgins@gjames.com.au by the Tuesday of the next week if you have any information to add to the newsletters – simply email the text or send an attachment.