Bobby Moore Walking Football Festival - Sheffield - 8th July 2017

“A worthwhile trip to support our friends at SY&H FA, a great 'shift' put in by all our players.” John Myatt, Team Captain

On Saturday 8th July Sheffield & Hallamshire County FA hosted a Walking Football festival in Sheffield in aid of The FA’s Charity Partner, the Bobby Moore Fund.

With the FA covering all the festival costs, 100% of the entry fee went directly to the Bobby Moore Fund to fund life-saving bowel cancer research. Since the Bobby Moore fund was set up in 1993 mortality rates have fallen 30% and over £23.5 million has been raised.
Despite a very busy competitive schedule recently, Wanderers were keen to support the Festival, so a squad of seven made the short trip down to SGP Thorncliffe, Sheffield.

Peter Bentley was in goal, with Stewart Rosier and Niall ODonnell in defence. Laurence Watkins started with John Myatt and Ian Walker had a free role, with Steven Stoker was used as first change.

We started with a couple of scoreless draws but came unstuck in our third game where Barnsley scored with a speculative shot. However, we then recovered to take a couple of relatively straightforward victories with ODonnell scoring a penalty to win one game, and Watkins and Stoker knocking in a couple after ODonnell had failed with another penalty chance.

Unfortunately under a baking sun, our energy levels fell in the final round of games, and with Ian Walker suffering bruised ribs and John Myatt a strain we lost a well contested game against Sheffield 0-1. In our final game we lost again to the overall winners Barnsley 0-2.

What had been expected to be a steady day's fun festival turned about to be a pretty competitive nine games of ten minutes each of 6-a-side Walking Football. Our small squad and the injuries suffered reduced our chances of overall success. Stewart Rosier was the pick of the Wanderers players.

In the excellent raffle which took place at the end of the Football, Stewart, John and Niall and a Team ticket won four prizes of a Futsal ball each - these have been donated to the Club.

This message was received subsequently from Jade Elson, Assistant Football Development Officer at Sheffield & Hallam County FA:

John,

I just wanted to email you to say on behalf of myself, Sheffield & Hallamshire FA Chairman Brian Jones and everyone at The FA & Bobby Moore Fund, a huge THANK YOU for your support over the weekend at the charity walking football festival.

I am very pleased to tell you we have raised over £600 which will go directly to the charity who support vital research to help save lives.

I have attached your teams photo to this email. I will also be posting further photos on the County FA website alongside a news story about the event over the next couple of days. We hope you thoroughly enjoyed the day & had a brilliant time, we all sure did.

Kind regards,
Jade

Niall O'Donnell
Roving Reporter

Updated 11:45 - 2 Sep 2019 by David Holbrow