Football Regionals U19

On Friday the 6th of March the U-19 boys football team went to Chengelo to compete against other Copperbelt schools in order to see who would go to Lusaka to represent the Copperbelt region. We were put into two pools; in our group we had Ndola Trust, Mpelembe and Simba. In the other group were Trident (who recently just joined ISAZ), Chengelo, Kalulushi Trust, Nsansa and Lechwe.

Our first game was against Ndola Trust and we took a very early lead through Edwin, possibly even with our first attack. But unfortunately that did more harm than good to us as we ended up losing that game 4-1. It was a very demoralising first game but the most important thing is we tried to improve on our mistakes and went into the Mpelembe game almost a whole different team. We ended up beating them 3-1 with two goals by James and one by his brother Paul. We let in an easy goal but the most important thing was that we put in a good performance and actually won! J  Our next game was against Simba, this was a game that if we wanted even the slightest chance of going through to Lusaka, we had to win. We played really hard in that game continuing our good performance from the previous game; we ended up 3-1 with Paul getting a hat-rick. Mpelembe had beat Ndola Trust 1-0 in the other game which meant we were all [three teams] on six points as well as having the same goal difference! After a long anxious wait [Just before bed time] we got the news that we went through, based on the fact that we had beaten them [Mpelembe] 3-1 in our game [Head-to-head tie breaker]. This meant that we were to play Chengelo, the hosts, in the semi finals [the next day] who, in the group stage, hadn't lost a game.

 Seeing as they where the hosts they had the upper hand when it came to support. But that didn't stop us, we played a really high intensity game, closing them down at every corner of the pitch, we eventually won that game 3-0 with Paul getting his second hat trick of the tournament. This meant we were in the finals for the first time in at least five years. We were to face Ndola Trust yet again. We went in that game daring not to have the same outcome. We eventually ended the day on a sad note losing 1-0, but all in all, it was a great weekend for the boys, an amazing experience and a very interesting drive back too having broken down [four flat tryes] at least three times.

The Man of the Match for me was Paul.

By Edwin Dingwall.