The Under 16's Representative Team played their first match last night (Monday 16th January) under floodlights on the new 4G pitch at Keynsham Town FC against Bristol Rovers FC.

 

The team was managed by Chester Booth from Burton Albion Central and was made up from players from 9 of our clubs.

 

The game started fairly slowly with both teams looking to establish some kind of dominance and both had early chances to go ahead which neither could quite convert. That looked like changing on 15 minutes when a penalty was awarded, fairly, to Bristol Rovers but an excellent diving save by Simon Yard kept the score at 0-0. A couple of minutes later Rovers did open the scoring and went in at the end of the first period 1-0 up.

The second period started much more frantically with both sides seeming to go more attacking in their styles and Rovers opened up a 2 goal lead after a missed clearance allowed them a 1 v 1 which they converted. Josh Ramella for the JPLS then went on a nice mazey and very coolly converted past the keeper to make it 2-1. Rovers came back with another goal before on the stroke of half time Lewis Pitts got to a through ball and with the help of the Rovers defender managed to lob the keeper from 25 yards. 3-2 to Rovers at half time.

The second half (3rd period) started equally frantically with both sides having good chances and the JPLS scored to make it 3-3 and set up a fascinating last 30 minutes. Rovers threw everything forward and scored before the 3rd period ended to make it 4-3.

The last 20 minute period started brightly for the JPLS with Jackson Ndundula latching onto a lovely through ball and megging the keeper to make it 4-4 and I would have quite happily ended the game as for a team of boys that had never played before they had done tremendously but the last 10 minutes had to be played and in this time Rovers showed the greater understanding and cohesion that existed in their team to score 2 late goals and win the match 6-4.

The boys did tremendously well and I agree with Chester who said "if we had these boys training together even just a few times they would have won tonight" - we have tremendous players in this league throughout all our age groups and the football I have seen in these rep team games has underlined this quality.

Thanks to everyone involved last night - late night and long journeys I know but it was worth it to see the boys play as well as they did.

Photos: You will see a gallery below containing photos taken by us on the day you are more than welcome to help yourselves to any of them free of charge as per normal but we have also created our own gallery where larger copies of these photos can be purchased from as little as 18p (each).
There is also some great gift ideas there if you want to spend a little more.
As you may already be aware the leagues representative teams program is totally free of charge to our players so ALL proceeds from our PhotoBox gallery go towards helping fund the representative teams with kit etc.
http://www.photoboxgallery.com/JPLS