Page 82 - MERCIAN Eagle 2021

Football Club
Football Officer Coaching Staff
Captain
Capt Liam Kennedy
CSgt Bryan Chadbourne
Cpl Lee Bray/
Cpl David Spencer
As with every other aspect of military life, COVID 19 has had a severe impact on sport in the army, football ground to a halt in Cyprus as the restrictions were introduced. Eventually, as the restrictions finally began to lift, we found ourselves wrapped up
in the unit move from Cyprus to Weeton Barracks all whilst preparing for a major exercise in Kenya, so not much time for football!
On arrival in Weeton we bid farewell
to CSgt Shirton as he left the Army for pastures new, and we thank him for his time as the manager of the team for the past few years. His boots have been eagerly filled by CSgt Chadbourne who has relished the chance to bring himself on for the odd cameo appearance. In May 21 we conducted a sports fair for the whole battalion to showcase
the opportunities
available in Army
sport, this resulted in
63 soldiers registering
an interest in football.
We used the next few
weeks to hold trials and
managed to identify
some new young talent
to join the team and
represent 2 MERCIAN.
Any soldier in the
battalion that wants to play football no matter what their level of ability is now has the chance every Wednesday afternoon.
We managed to select a strong squad to represent the battalion in several pre- season tournaments, firstly the Army in the North 7’s tournament, which took place in Catterick in early September. The
2 MERCIAN FC Infantry 6’s Sep 21
team made it through the group stage unbeaten and won their quarter final match convincingly. The Semi final saw us drawn against ITC Catterick, after a hard-fought
80 THE MERCIAN EAGLE
Any soldier in the battalion that wants to play football no matter what their level of ability is now has the chance
2 MERCIAN FC Army in the North tournament Sep 21
Regiment at Fullwood Barracks.
As I write this, the league has just been
started and we are looking to compete strongly in our first season back in the UK. We have a well-established young squad full of talent and enthusiasm.
A UK tour is still an aspiration which will hopefully incorporate all the MERCIAN recruiting areas prior to the planned amalgamation of the Regiment.
match we narrowly lost in extra time, ITC went on to win the competition outright, but the team were encouraged by their performance after only playing together a few times.
Later in September we entered a team into the Infantry
6’s competition in
Aldershot, again we dominated the group stages, but this time were narrowly defeated by the Royal Welsh in the quarter finals. After several preseason friendlies we
are now set and ready for the upcoming season, we have already had a successful start to our Army Cup campaign with a convincing 9-3 victory against 3 Medical
2 MERCIAN FC selection open trials Jun 21