William Law Primary School represent Peterborough United in the Community Cup
Here in the Posh Foundation, we have been running a Community Kids Cup scheme for many years with this year seeing a record number of 20 schools taking part in the competition.The schools were split into four different geographically selected groups, in which they would play each other once in a table/group style of format. The top two teams from each group would go on to play in a knock out stage, starting with the quarter finals. The final saw Middleton Primary School and William Law Primary battle out an excellent match where William Law won 4-2. From this competition, the local winners- William Law went on to represent Peterborough United at the Football League Championship South Regional Final’s. The squad was named and set for the day:
GK- Alex Hill, Defenders- Luke Ferris, Corey Mcdonald, Spencer Haskins, Midfielders- Nathaniel Cureton, Nicholas Schurch, Harvey Hancock, Attackers- Wanya Marcal.
Accompanying the team were David Lowings and GK Coach for the school Darren Gibbons and myself, Michael Johnson. The competition day started on the morning of Wednesday 13th March in which the squad and their parents were at the school for a 8am departure to Leicester City’s training ground on a coach supplied by the club.
Upon arriving, we started our warm up preparation to get ready for the big day because if we were to go through as Champions then we would be going to Wembley to play the Northern Finalists.
The competition’s hosts Leicester City gathered all the teams in to give out the 2 groups and how they would be split. Our group was as follows; Cardiff City, Charlton Athletic, Crystal Palace, Millwall, Peterborough and Watford. We were up first to play Watford, the game Kicked off at a frantic pace in which Nathaniel Cureton scored a goal within the first minute to give us a 1-0 lead and this proved to be vital as the matches are only 10 minutes long and the team that goes 1-0 up seems to go on to win.
We were straight onto the second pitch without a break against Crystal Palace, they were fresh as they were yet to play but as the game kicked off we started once again straight out the blocks to lead with Nathaniel Cureton striking again to put us to a 1-0 lead. Then minutes later Cureton bagged another goal to make it 2-0. With only a few minutes left it looked comfortable for Peterborough when Wanya Marcal made it 3-0 to cruise to victory with a truly magnificent performance. The combination between Wanya and Nathaniel seemed unstoppable.
We were beaten 2-0 by Millwall in the following game, but against Charlton, we went 1-0 up with Wanya Marcal scoring once again and causing havoc, but then Charlton replied straight away with a scrappy goal. However, once again Wanya Marcal run rings around thedefence to score his second of the match to help us win 2-1. We held a strong group position as we had won 3 and lost 1 with a good amount of goals scored. Our final match was against Cardiff, which was a very close match, which ended up 0-0, but I must say a massive well done to our defence as they were up against a 6ft 10 year old!
We progressed into the semi-finals on goal difference, it was a bit tense for the lads and the parents, but obviously we were delighted. We were in the semi finals against Derby County. The game had been a very tight and nerve racking affair, but then Nathaniel Cureton popped up with a screamer from 15 yards out with only a minute left of time.
We played Millwall in the final game of the season. The match was very end to end with both teams creating plenty of chances and with Wembley in sight and only 30 seconds to go a magnificent run from one of the Millwall players ended up in a winning goal.
Although we hadn’t progressed to Wembley I am pleased that we had experienced the day out and such great results and matches. I must say a massive thank you and well done to everyone competing in our local competition and to everyone at William Law.