The Jitty V AFA Liverpool

The Jitty 25 – AFA Liverpool 19

AFA Liverpool Team:- Wendy D, Roxanne T, Jessica K, Peter M, Carlie H, Antony M, Steven H, Tony T, Joseph J, Kyla D

The Jitty Team:- James R, Jonathan D, Andrew P, Charlie C, Liam M, Ben O, James H

Action Force Africa (registered charity) started an anti-racism football team made up of girls and boys (age 12 to 17 years) from North Wales and North Liverpool, who train on a regular basis. They had sent letters and e-mails requesting opponents, and the Jitty responded.

The match took place at Enderby Leisure Centre on the 20th January 2007, with the visiting team making what can only be described as a “nasty” time to be starting their trip down from Liverpool to Leicester (ie, stupid o’clock in the morning!). The Jitty has been on a residential to Aberglaslyn in Wales before, so we had a fair idea of the length of time they had spent cooped up in their minibus!

So, while we were waiting for a few of the Jitty team to turn up a warm up took place, and it was here we could easily see the huge task that faced us. Most teams have a weak link, but oh no, AFA Liverpool had brought 10 players down who were all pretty skilful, boys and girls. A quick analysis of their team revealed only a couple of weak points, lack of height, whereas the Jitty fielded a team of players who were mostly 6ft tall or over, and the fact they’d just spent a couple of hours on a minibus.

Writing a match report is nearly impossible as the match moved pretty quickly and there were a load of goals at either end. Charlie turned out to be an absolute goal machine for the Jitty, whilst Carlie for AFA, was proving to be our Goalkeeper’s (Andrew) nemesis rifling shot after shot past him. If you want to see how good and persistent the strikers were take a look at the videos! Fortunately for us, our midfield (Liam) also provided a number of goals and helped cover our defence, and at one point our defenders got in on the action too!

The match was played with true competitive spirit, with 50/50 balls being competed for strongly, but fairly. AFA were very pacey, and their passes to each other were pinpoint accurate, but the Jitty’s defence (Jonathan and James R) were extremely adept at reading the opposition, and more often then not managed to break down the oppositions attack in the final third.