It is a remarkable achievement just getting to the National Finals, let alone competing verses the very best in 5 close games.

In the end Durlston finished 11th place out of all IAPS Schools. Incredible. Especially when you look at the size of every other school there. One of the schools we played had 9 U13 teams compared with our 2. That was the challenge we were up against.

Merchant Taylor's School set the back drop for today's tournament with 3 astros, 4 groups of 4 teams and a mountain of medals to be won. In our first game verses Kings College Taunton we raced to a 2-0 lead. We had shockd them and they were not expecting us to come out the blocks as we did. We then had 2 glorious chances to extend the lead but it wasn't to be as Kings clawed two goals back to finish 2-2. A disappointing end but our first points on the board. Next up was Cranleigh. A huge school who are regularly crowned National Champions (they ended up wining today with 4 wins from 5 games). Durlston were the only team of the day that Cranleigh failed to beat. Testament to the boys efforts, Tarka's brilliant goalkeeping and a team spirit that is infectious. Mason scored first and then came the Cranleigh reply. We thwarted most but they equalized in the second half. Full time 1-1. In our last game we play St Peter's York. The group was well poised as any team could still win the group. Unfortunately we got caught with a couple of break away goals and when chasing a reply conceded a sucker third goal. Durlston did not give up and got a goal back and in truth deserved at least 1 more. A 3-1 defeat left us third in our group and we entered the Vase Competition for the afternoon.

Here we faced The New Beacon School who we played at our regional round (They won the qualifier). We played perhaps our best game of the day as we took the game to them. 1-1 was the final score but it really should have been a Durlston win. Penalty shuffled preceded with Durlston losing 2-3. We now played Cargilfield from Scotland in the 11th/12th playoff. Again a close gap with Durlston leading for the majority of the game. Again troubles with converting chances (something you have to do at this level) meant Cargilfield were able to score to finish 1-1. Onto penalty shuffles again but this time Durlston won 1-0.

11th out of the 16 teams on the day but 11th out of over 100 who entered the competition. An amazing achievement for the boys and school, something they can be very proud of

Results

Group Stage

2-2 v Kings College Taunton (Mason x2)

1-1 v Cranleigh (Mason)

1-3 v St Peters York (Mason)

Knockout

1-1 (2-3 pens) v The New Beacon (Mason)

1-1 (1-0 pens) v Cargilfield (Alex)