Under 17's

It is fair to say that this season for the Under 17's was disrupted for a number of reasons. Opposition pulled out at the last moment, failed to turn up for the fixture or were unable to rearrange fixtures. As a result we lost four of our league fixtures. Clashes with school games, exams and injuries meant that players were unavailable so we were never able to play a settled side or indeed were never able to play our strongest team.

We were able to field a team with mixed ability who were all keen but against strong teams such as Maidenhead and Bray and Reading we were clearly outclassed. The last two seasons have been difficult in terms of players availability and it does pull into question the validity of running an Under 17's team.

On the positive side Sam Jordan was picked to represent the MCC and several of the players played for some of the adult teams.Those who were available came regularly to training/coaching. They were keen, willing to learn and did include some boys who had very little experience of playing in a team dynamic.We were also working with some boys who have really good ability but were two/three years younger and who will have learnt through playing at this older level