Report: Badgers 2025/26 vs Alford – October 19, 2025

The new Spalding Badgers team took on their Alford counterparts in their first friendly of the season and started their series of a game with an excellent performance to record a two-nil win.

With half of the team never playing a full-size pitch game before (Ross, Aras, Martins, Roberts, Ethan, and Stan), it was a steep learning curve however the newcomers by the end looked very comfortable and would have learnt a lot from the game. And well done to them.

Spalding dominated the early stages of the game and in all honesty, it was just one way traffic as the more experienced juniors played some brilliant hockey. It was a case of Isaac and the Beanstalk (Alex) running central midfield well spreading the ball wide to Ethan & Si (joint MOM) on the flanks with Will and his dad, John, causing their hosts problems.

Will opened the scoring with a well taken short corner shot after just five minutes of the game had elapsed. He doubled his tally barely ten minutes later with another fine shot to give the visitors a two-goal cushion.

Defensively, Spalding were excellent. Stan, Roberts & Aras were superb in defence making a series of great tackles and passing the ball well out of the danger area. Martins playing at CDM was excellent stopping the progression of play up the field and making key passes. Sam who came in at the last minute also helped greatly in the game making some important blocks & passes included the excellent short corner pass to Will for Spalding’s opener.

To make the game more even, Spalding moved things around with captain Andy moving to umpire (and even play for a period for Alford to challenge the side). This meant that joint MOM Alex assumed the captain’s role and played centre back. It was brilliant to hear and see the young Spalding player thrive in that role as he guided the younger less experienced players.

And all the other more experienced juniors picked up on that and also started to guide. At one point, the entire team were aged fourteen and under and they played brilliantly as a unit.

Ross (another joint MOM) in goal made good saves and made sure that players were marked with great calling from the back.

So, all in all, a good day for a brand-new unit and with more new players to come into the fold, the foundations are starting to be built for a good unit.

Thanks go to Alford for their hospitality, and the game was played in an incredibly positive spirit with both sides contributing making it a brilliant game to play in.