Modderfontein team shines at English International Super Cup

The Modder Football Club (FC) u-12 team was recently invited to participate in the English International Super Cup for 2017.

Also read: Players take part in soccer trials

12 boys were selected to participate and represent the Modderfontein club.

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Darren Hay of Modder FC said a lot of time and effort from their fund-raising committee went into organising a once-in-a-lifetime trip for the boys.

“The organisation of this tour started late in 2016 and carried on into June this year. A large portion of our contributions came from local sponsors such as AJC Plumbing, Fedatech Engineering, Balwin Foundation, Shipshape Software, Aspen Pharmacare, Schneider Electric, Air Mauritius as well as a few anonymous donors. Modder Football Club would like to thank them again for the amazing opportunities they afforded us,” said Darren.

Part of the experience for these young boys was to visit Old Trafford, home of Manchester United and to play in a tournament representing 17 different countries.

The tournament was held over four days. In Modder’s group were teams from Taiwan, USA as well as England.

Modder drew their first game 0-0 with a team from Blackburn while they adjusted to the difficult conditions of rain and muddy fields.

They managed to secure a 5-2 win over Cosmos from New York to set up a group winner decider on Friday versus Manchester SFC.

The winner of this game would top their group and move into the quarter-final stages.

Second place would also go straight into the cup knockout stream.

“On Friday the boys were fully geared up for their game against Manchester and Modder FC were leading 2-1 right up to the final kick of the game, only for Manchester to fight back and equalise 2-2,” said Darren.

On Friday afternoon Modder entered the quarter-finals of the cup stream and played a team called Pennine Juniors from Liverpool.

“This was a really good game and both sides couldn’t be separated after a 1-1 draw in normal time. Eventually Modder managed to secure a 2-1 win in extra time and advanced to the semi-finals which would be played on Saturday,” he said.

“Players were excited as well as nervous because they had to come up a against a very big and physical side called Winsford Colts in the semi-finals. Modder produced the game and result of the tournament by winning 6-1 and advancing to the finals against HouJing from Taiwan. The boys stuck to their game plan and played beautiful football, which had a lot of spectators commenting on how well the football was played,” he said.

Darren said there were a lot of scouts from top English clubs who took an interest in a few of the Modder boys.

On Sunday the boys played against a very disciplined, big and experienced side from Taiwan.

“Modder started well by going 1-0 up in the first two minutes. HouJing soon equalised to make it 1-1 and the game started to be dominated by the team from Taiwan. Soon after, they went up 2-1 in what was becoming a very good final.

Modder won a penalty, which we unfortunately missed. The score remained tight at 2-1 for a while. It became quite obvious that the smaller boys from Modder couldn’t compete against the physicality of the boys from Taiwan. The score was soon 5-1 to HouJing but Modder didn’t stop fighting. We managed to pull a goal back to instill a bit more pride in the score and for the game to finish at 5-2,” said Darren.

All the boys were happy to have advanced that far in the tournament and got second place overall. They only lost one game in the tournament.

“It was an exceptional overall result for all the boys and their parents who had travelled far to watch,” he said.

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