Despite it being more organised majorly for Dover Grammar to allow their A-Level students the opportunity to be filmed ready for practical assessment evidence, we took the opportunity to get the majority of our squad together for their first competitive outing.
Missing Taggart & Hobbs for other school sporting commitments (the cricket tour to Barbados & the School v Old Boys Golf Championship) meant that we had a squad of 14 of our touring party to choose from.
From the outset, the goal for the Harvey Team was to simply get used to playing together as a team. It just so happened that the rock hard, bouncy pitch gave the boys an insight in to how playing conditions would be over in The States in the Summer, where fields will either be really hard & dry due to the warm conditions or made of "turf-field".
The main objective for the squad for the first couple of games is to get used to the new system that Coaches Walton & Stevenson have gone for. Slightly different from anything that we have played before as a school, & for some totally foreign to their club traditions. The plethora of attacking players in the squad has allowed us to have a more offensive outlook than previously. It is just now about reigning in some of their attacking instincts for the good of the team.
This new setup meant that a few players were in relatively new positions. Positions that, although as a squad we have the ability to rotate players in & out effectively, some will have to get used to in order for us to be successful in August. Someone who was in a very familiar position was Charlie Hancock who took up his place between the sticks, offering a positive & confident last line of defence.
Infront of him was a mixture of experienced players & tour members in Jake Brazier & Josh Donald, mixed in along with relative new comers to the 1stXI set up with Rob Price & Kane Nelhams making the step up to the team towards the end of this past season after some very impressive performances in the 2ndXI.
The possession game we had planned bared fruit quite quickly with an early goal. This was built on with further good chances created from a mixture of good positive football when in possession as well as a high tempo pressing game when not having the ball.
Harry Nunn put in corner after corner, but Harvey just couldn't quite get the 2nd. With the quintet of Callum Hearmon, Ethan Maffia, Nathan Smith & Ryan Taylor sat in behind Sam Ansell, we were always a threat when we got the ball down & played forward.
A constant rotation of players throughout the game allowed the boys to all have a good run out (including goalkeeper James Roche who had a spell up front as a target man before returning to his more familiar surroundings in the defensive goal mouth), whilst Coaches Walton & Stevenson were able to see all the available players in a variety of positions. This rotation system did stop the flow of our football slightly, however we were still creating many chances. The inevitable 2nd goal was then forthcoming.
By this point, the Dover Grammar teaches were not impressed with what their boys were offering on 2 fronts. Firstly that they were not dealing with us effectively, but more importantly that the footage they were filming would not do their boys justice when it came to the external assessor. They started to offer a more direct approach, with long balls forward & a heavy reliance on a long throw. These were, for the most part, dealt with well by Aaron James winning header after header.
A late lapse in concentration, maybe due to a lack of fitness (something we will work on in the coming weeks) saw a few mistakes creep in to our game, resulting in a poor goal conceded. Something that not only the coaches were disappointed with, but also the boys. Something that is good to see.
A brief chat at the end of the game led us to come up with our team's goal for the tour:
To remain unbeaten whilst over in America
Something that is a tough ask with the quality of team that we will come up against, but something that is achievable with this squad. The next step on this journey is with the Easter training sessions that will work on not only general fitness & conditioning, but also football fitness, skills & set pieces & then phases of play.
See you all bright & early on Monday. 9am at the Pavilion. Bring your trainers as well as your boots. . .
Squad - Hancock, Price, Nunn, James, Brazier, Donald (c), Davison, Hearmon, Maffia, Taylor, Ansell, Nelhams, Smith.
