04 August 2023
The 2023 Soccer season commenced back in Term 4 of last year when we selected a squad of 18 boys for our UK Soccer Tour. Unfortunately a number of our best players were unable to attend due to other commitments, including our captain, Bailey O’Neil (Year 12) who was selected to represent the National U17s (the Joeys) during the same dates as the tour.
The tour left on April 6th and consisted of thee fantastic weeks of playing matches, visiting iconic tourist sites, watching premier league games and improving significantly – both as individual players, and as team players.
We spent the first six days in Manchester and on the first weekend we attended Easter Sunday mass at Manchester Cathedral and watched Man United beat Everton at Old Trafford amongst a crowd of nearly 80,000. In the following days we toured Old Trafford and the Etihad Stadium, and watched Manchester City beat Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarter final. On the final day we travelled to Fleetwood Town on a freezing, wet day and, despite being competitive throughout the match, we lost our first match against Atherton FC.
After a training session with Wolverhampton, Wanderers we then travelled to and stayed two nights at The National Football Centre at St George’s Park near Birmingham. This was perhaps a highlight of the tour from a soccer perspective as we played a match against a local team on an indoor full size pitch, again losing narrowly in a competitive match.
We then travelled to London to stay at the Chelsea FC hotel and enjoy all the London sights, including a VIP tour of the Houses of Parliament, whilst playing the last three of our matches.
Unfortunately, we lost all three of these games to very strong opposition but showed real signs of significant improvement since the start of the tour.
Sean Inman
Head of Soccer