What a year 2022 was! We were pleased to be joined by a few new school friends to form a bigger U8’s team. We had a great season of wins, which saw us moved up to the 8D’s. Our only loss was to the ridgebacks in week 1 and when we faced the club again in our last week, we fought to the end and ended the season with our draw. 2022 challenges included the bigger field, throw-ins, goalkeepers, corners and just when we thought we were through interrupted seasons of covid, the wet weather rolled in.

A big thank you goes to Coach Ivan for giving up his time each and every week to coach our boys. The boys’ skills improved week after week, it was so great to see them use the skills Ivan taught them at training and crazy foot moves they had devised at school.

Jake was always putting himself in the right position, working hard to both score goals and setting up moves to assist his teammates with goal scoring. Cody our all round sportsman who follows that ball wherever it goes, whether that is defending or attacking.

John grew in confidence week after week and by the end of the season was always with the ball, with some fantastic dribbling and great passes.

Luke followed that ball around all season; everyone knew his only focus was to score a goal.

Alex was an all-rounder, who could kick goals but saw himself falling into defence, providing great clearance from the backline, with a great boot on him.

Toby made his return from rugby. He had some fancy footwork and did some great moves in the midfield, with some hilarious commentary along the way.

Zane our new recruit and first season at soccer, initially liked watching the ball in games but slowly built up his confidence and did some great passes to teammates.

Nate our superstar goalkeeper, he often volunteered to be goalie and how glad we were, I lost count how many goals he saved!

Henry was very versatile on the field, settling up goals with teammates and often volunteering to be keeper.

Channing was our player of the season; he was instrumental with his dribbling and ability to score goals from any part of the field.

While they all moved around a lot on the field we started to see some our players establish some favoured positions where, by the end of the season, making them their own. We look forward to seeing you all back next year!

Jodie Hicks, Manager