It was a lovely sunny morning at Merchiston as we went along for their inaugural U11 Hockey tournament. It was a mixed squad with Salman and Monty S getting the chance to experience some tournament hockey for the first time this season. The format was a round robin with matches lasting 12 minutes one-way. The organisation was great and the morning ran very smoothly indeed. We played some lovely attacking team hockey at times, passing the ball into space for our wide players to run onto and this caused the opposition some difficulties. Our first 4 games against Belhaven, Merchiston, Heriot's and ESMS were solid wins without conceding. The final two games were our most competitive with a 4-2 win over Watson's and a 2-1 win over Strath. We needed a terrific team goal at the end to get the win with just seconds to spare and to settle the nerves! 

Goal of the day belonged to the captain, Arlo. Our left back, Stuart was alert at the hit out and made an early pass out wide to Arlo on the left who somehow managed to keep it in play with some terrific skill. He then accelerated down the left, cutting in and just after entering the circle, he made a lovely disguised pass into the bottom corner past the keeper. 

The moment of the day, however was Monty S, who has only recently decided to don the GK kit, making an outstanding stick save when he was left one on one with a Watson's attacker. Had that gone in, we would have been 2-1 down with not long to go. 

Therefore we were delighted to be the first winners of the Merchiston U11 Cup and look forward to defending it next year! Well played to all the boys. My huge thanks to Ally Evans and Merchiston for putting on such a great competition. It was brilliant to see so many boys out playing hockey!