It was a beautiful Spring afternoon as most players headed up the A1 straight from school to get to Ponds Forge in time for an 18:30 meet, for what was always expected to be a tough game.

And it was, very tough.

Barely 30 seconds into the first quarter Sheffield were already leading by two goals. And it wasn’t long before it became three. Gabriel scored a nail-biting penalty followed by another goal soon after, then Harry scored too, pulling the score back to 4:3 to Sheffield. But the stronger team kept going and by the end of the quarter they were winning 6:3.

The second quarter continued in the same vein, with a couple of brilliant saves by Ethan keeping the score down to 12:3.

The goals kept on coming during the third quarter too, with a tired Grantham team trying their best against the stronger Sheffield side. Gareth did his level best to motivate and rally the team; tough work as the score had totted up to 19:3 by the end of Quarter 3.

Quarter four came around and Grantham pulled some fantastic goals out of the bag! Ben, Oscar, Harrison (x2) and Bella between them brought our score up to 8. Unfortunately in the same quarter our opponents scored a further 8 goals, bringing the final score to 27:8.

It was a hard match, and a late night, especially with school the next day. But from these experiences our players learn new skills and tactics, and as we saw in the final quarter, when they put their minds to it, the goals roll in.

Well done everyone, and big thanks as always to the parents for ferrying our players to Sheffield after work and school, and huge thanks to Gareth who was on his third trip in a week to Ponds Forge following a busy weekend of Talent Centre Games.

And now… the Easter Break! Time to relax…..