Strand In Borough Football Finals

The Strand Football team took to the field again this week as they played in the Borough Finals at Osterley Goals Football centre. This event always a highly competitive and fiercely contested event with some exception talent on display from Hounslow schools. Strand got under way with a 2-1 victory against Norwood Green - Eli with a tidy finish and then Jimmy with a well taken penalty. A poor start against Spring Grove saw us go 2 down within a minute! Wholesale changes were made and 4 subs came on to good effect but even Henry's goal and further endeavour wasn't enough to stop us losing 2-1. A victory then was needed in the last game to guarantee promotion from the qualifying group. A neat and tidy Feltham team stood in our way. We battled and attacked from the off and peppered their goal with shots but an inspired Feltham keeper seemed to stop everything! We then hit the post and had a chance cleared off the line. Finally Eli made our dominance pay with a low hard shot into the bottom corner. Relief was short lived as Feltham promptly scored from their kick off with their one and only shot on our goal! The game ended 1-1 and we had to wait to see if results in other games would go our way. They did and we had progressed through to the knock-out stages again for the 5th straight year! The last 8 out of 57 schools in the borough now entered into a straight knockout tournament. Rosary were our opponents and they proved why they won their qualifying group without losing as they attacked us from the off and rarely let us out of our own half! Lewis, in our goal, though was having an inspired game and he pulled off some amazing saves that astounded the now large audience that had built up watching the final games. Hoping for a counter attack, Mr A pushed Huxley right up the pitch and changed our tactics to a more long ball style (think Wimbledon circa 1988!). It almost paid off as the Rosary keeper was eventually called into action and, with some cooler finishing, we could have stolen a victory. Alas, it was not to be as a low cross was accidentally put in to our own goal and we didn't have time to respond. 1-0 to Rosary. A final positional match to see who would finish in 6th place was next against Southville. A match that again saw us under lots of pressure and very little of the ball but this time with a positive result! Lily's twisting and turning dribble followed by a shot found the back of the net and we held on for victory! Well Done to the team who had exceeded expectations and made us all very proud.