Tamworth under-13 boys coach Graeme McKenzie said there were some pleasing things to take away from the weekend’s state championships at Wagga Wagga, although the Frogs will have to fight their way back into the top division.
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Despite beating New England 2-1 in their play-off game they couldn’t stave off relegation with the bottom two sides dropping down to Division 2 for next year.
They weren’t far off holding their place in Division 1, coming “perilously close” to a goal late in their final pool match against Far North Coast. The 0-all draw sealed their fate, having lost their other four games.
“There were areas we competed well but we couldn’t sustain any pressure and couldn’t score goals,” McKenzie said.
He wasn’t too surprised by that, expecting scoring goals to be their biggest problem.
“We knew that we were probably going to do it reasonably tough before we went away,” he said.
One of the main reasons was they were quite a young side. Of the 14 that went away, eight were underage.
“The fact that we didn’t get two teams to go away meant we had quite a small pool to draw from,” he said.
“It is a bit of a glitch in this age group.”
He said they worked really hard on trying to get them further advanced, but the weekend showed there is still some way to go.
“It just demonstrates that we need to keep working hard for them to improve their basic skills,” he said.
“That was probably one of the big differences, our basic skills there was quite a gap from top teams.”
“However there were some pleasing things. Some guys really showed some improvement.”
He said the effort was certainly there though, and felt as a team they were heading in the right direction.
It was a baptism of fire with their first two opponents making the semi-finals.
They were more competitive in their remaining games, although couldn’t find the back of the net until the New England game.
“We scored the first two goals in the first couple of minutes. Then we went to sleep,” McKenzie said.
He was impressed with keeper Sam Griffiths.
“He was solid in all matches. It would have been a lot bigger scores had Sam not been there,” he said.
He was also “particularly pleased” with Liam Bower, who he commented “showed significant improvement”.
Luke Grey also played consistently well throughout the weekend
