In the splendid surroundings of the elite Christs Hospital School, with perfect weather conditions, the U16 boys performance team were ready to face a Horsham side just as keen as us to make it through to the semi-finals of the EH Cup competition.

From the opening moments, Brombeck took the match to Horsham and within the first minute had won a short corner, the first of eight over the 70 minutes. There were occassional forays into the Brombeck half but the majority of the play in the opening 35 was in the Horsham half with a number of shots on target. The wind was very much behind the BromBeck boys but at the break, it was level at nil, nil.

The second half followed the same pattern as the first, but the deadlock was finally broken in the 54th minute with an instinctive knock in by James, converting what had initially been a fumbled short corner into a lead. Keeping up the pressure, the BromBeck team pounced again only two minutes later with a dink from Jake to put the visitors up by two. More shots and short corners followed but the scoreline remained unmoved.

Being strong in attack was very much where BromBeck were dominating but on the occassions when Horsham did manage to get near the Brombeck D, there were some excellent defensive performances from particularly Sam and Rohan, keeping the home side off the scoresheet.

There were great performances from everyone in the team proving this is a quality squad from the back to the front which means it is ready to take on any team. Despite being considerably less mobile than usual in a support boot, Ben was as vocal as usual and had the game management sorted.

Thanks all the parents for driving the boys to Horsham. It was worth the day out and we await the draw next week to see who we will face next - likely to be at home.

MJ