Our under twelve squad played its first full season of fixtures last year. We won four of fourteen.
We are putting that on this page on purpose, because the season was a success and the record says otherwise. Three things were decided before it started. Every child would play at least half of every game. Every child would play in at least three positions across the season. And no child would be played out of their age group to win a match.
All three cost us games. Two of the defeats were heavy and one was against a squad that had picked eleven and played them.
What happened by the end of it: the squad kept all nineteen players, which almost never happens across a first season; four children who had started as defenders finished as midfielders and two of them are now the best passers in the group; and in the last four games we won three, against squads who had beaten us earlier in the year with the same players.
A parent asked us in November whether we were trying to win. We were. We were trying to win in a way that still has nineteen children in it at fifteen.
