The 2012 Holy Trinity Golf Day will be held on Friday 29th June at our usual venue of Wycombe Heights Golf Centre

Once again players will compete for the Ted Rayner Memorial Cup, won last year by Philip Watkins.

More details to follow but you can reserve your place by sending an email to alancecil@gorsewalk.freeserve.co.uk

England women’s coach Hope Powell (pictured left) is campaigning for girls to be allowed to play the game with boys beyond the age of 13 in this country.

Writing in ”The Times’ on Monday, its Deputy Football Correspondent Matt Dickinson highlights this latest campaign to offer girls here the same rights as their European counterparts.

He reminds us that “the age at which mixed football is allowed in England was raised from 11 to 13 last year after a three year study, including research from Brunel University and in the wake of discussions within the FA that took more than a year. 

However in Scotland, mixed football is allowed up to 15, in Germany until they are 17, up to 19 in the Netherlands and there is no restriction in Norway and Sweden.”

HTJFC ,which has until recently run all-girl teams up to under 16′s and continues to offer mixed football to under 10s, will no doubt monitor this situation with interest but of course be guided by the Chiltern Church League’s rules and those of the Berks and Bucks FA.

January’s Manager of the Month trophy was awarded at the recent HT Managers Meeting.

The deserved winner was Mark Smith (centre of picture) for steering the Holy Trinity Troopers to their first win of the season, a 4-0 victory over St James Swifts that lifts the mighty Troopers off the bottom of the Cougars league.

It is a fantastic reward for Mark and the Troopers lads who have had to contend with low squad numbers all season.  

Let’s hope the Troopers can march on, further up the table!

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Here is Mark’s match report on that award winning victory:

HT Troopers chalk up their first win of 2012!
On Saturday 28 January 2012, HT Troopers ran out 4-0 winners over St James Swifts in a bit of a thriller to chalk up their first win of the season!  In a much improved start to the match, the Troopers were caught offside numerous times.  This was a clear indication that the boys were attacking well and that they were playing with much more confidence than the previous week against KCA. 

It wasn’t a one-sided match though….far from it!  The Swifts, playing slightly downhill and with the wind behind hit the post twice, nearly benefited from a freak own goal that skimmed the top of a post and had two goals disallowed for off-side – as well as numerous chances which were saved by the excellent Sam Wainman.  Somehow, the first half finished 0-0! 

The second half saw the Troopers get a proper grip on the match – making the wind and slope advantage count and seeing several chances either slide wide of the posts or gathered by the Swifts ‘keeper.  Eventually, in a fabulous 20 minutes for the Troopers, we saw goals from Sam Woolldridge, Rhys Bailes, James Lewis and Darius Adl – with two being set up by Tom Roy and the others set up by James Smith.  With the Swifts flagging, the Troopers were looking for more goals towards the end but just couldn’t find the right shot to beat the Swifts ‘keeper. Ally came very close with yet another excellent cross that, with a touch from any player, would have crossed the line.

Overall, it was a very good team performance with all the boys working hard and thoroughly deserving the win.  I had given each player a couple of performance targets before the game – and pretty much all of the boys achieved or exceeded their targets (although thinking back, I didn’t set anyone the target of scoring a goal, which was a bit remiss of me!).  Man of the Match was very, very difficult this week with so many boys playing their best football of the season.  The whole of the Troopers defence (Sam Wainman in goal, Carl, Charlie, James Smith and Jordan – and with help from Tom and Sam C in the second half) worked really hard in the first half and their efforts were epitomised by Charlie who had the best game of his Troopers’ career so far – making really good tackles, showing a cool head when on the ball and tracking straight back on the rare occasions he was beaten by a Swifts player.  So the Man of the Match award went to Charlie – on behalf of the whole defence but also for his excellent individual performance.  Well done Charlie!

In the Chiltern Church Junior Football League, rules have changed to try and eliminate the effect of huge scores, which can have a bad impact on defeated sides.

Therefore if there is a tie on points for any league position, mainly those that impact league titles or medal winning positions, then order will be decided on the results in their head to head games. If these still fail to produce a clear winner, then a play off game will be necessary.

We have already had to start thinking about next season – 2012-2013  – for certain reasons.

At the start of the current season last September, we found ourselves with more than an ideal number of children registered in some age groups and not enough in others. With a large number, it becomes difficult to give everyone  a game sometimes.
Some teams were unable to field a team until they had recruited more players.

To overcome that, we will be asking all existing players to sign up for next season on Saturdays 5th and 12th May - full details to be advised.

To help parents, there will be a one-off offer of a £5 subsidy towards the renewal HTJFC subscriptions, which are other unchanged, only for anyone registering by the 19th May. This excludes the Under 6 Academy where the football is FREE and we just collect £10 towards your family membership of the Hazlemere Sports Association Pavilion

Then on Saturday 19th May, we will be open to receive new applications to fill up the gaps in certain squads on a first come first served basis.

So it will be important for all existing HTJFC players to book their places on time.

The Holy Trinity Kestrels were involved in a Wycombe Wanderers’ run 6 a side tournament last Saturday held at Handycross Sports Centre.

The boys  had a great time and did incredibly well – winning all their games and going on to win the tournament outright !!!

There were 5 teams involved ( HT Kestrels / Wycombe Wanderers A / Wycombe Wanderers B / LBER / Chalfonts ) and they all played 4 games. Whilst FA rules prevent us from declaring results for Under 8s, the Kestrels scored 11 goals in their 4 games and only conceded one!

Each of the players received a Wycombe Wanderers medal and an activity book and all went home with a huge amount of pride ( especially the coaches ) !!

They finished the day off by watching Wycombe Wanderers win 3 – 0 against Rochdale at Adams Park and the boys even got to do a lap of honour of the ground at half time waving to all 4,285 fans !!!

What a great day and a great result for HT Kestrels!!

Over Christmas and the turn of the year, one of our HT team coaches Benedict Mwendwa visited Kenya with his family.

Now that many of our teams have had new kit this season, we had some spares of the red/blue reversible football shirts and gave these to Benedict to take out with him.

Two sets of shirts were given to the school football team at Kyangala Secondary School – located in a rural village in Machakos, Kenya – who were the recipients of the football kit.  Click on any of these small pictures to enlarge them.

They are grateful for the kit which the team really needed. You can find out more about the school by visiting http://www.kyangalaschool.ac.ke/

Do notice the quality of school pitches that they play on! Maybe Hazlemere Rec is not so bad after all!

Kyangala is a very needy area and Benedict has set up a charity which is supporting the village with water, health and education projects. You can learn more about our work by visiting http://www.kyangala-trust.org.uk/

We still play football!

Severe overnight frost meant that most of our pitches were declared unplayable on Saturday.

However in bright sunlight, some teams put the time to good use on what ground was fit for use to practice and improve their skills.

Here Chris and Jamie make the most of a frosty morning and lead the HT Kestrels training session. Click on each picture to enlarge it.

Hazlemere Sixes tournament this year will be held on Saturday 26th May (i.e. it will not be at the weekend of the bank holiday which has been moved into June).

Application forms will be available shortly, please email hazlemeresixes@aol.com if you are interested.

HT Mariners took December’s Manager of the Month trophy for their 100% record in that month.

Good wins against Chalfont (3-1) and St Josephs (5-1) established second place in the league going into the new year.

Keep up the good work Mariners!

The trophy was presented to Mariners’ coach John Dashwood following a thorough training session on 7th Jan.