Balham Blazers Season Report

As Balham Blazers come to the brief Christmas and New Year break in matches it's fair to say that, whilst there will always be ups and downs with twelve teams playing competitively, it's been an excellent season to date, both in terms of results and performance and most of their teams are in contention at or near the top of their respective leagues.

Their newly formed U9 Eagles have just picked up the club's first silverware of the season, winning a tournament at the David Beckham Academy on Saturday Dec 17th. Not only did they win it but they beat a Tottenham Academy team 4-0 on the way to doing so.

Being awarded the South East Regional and London FA Awards as Charter Standard Club of the Year has been great news for the club and helped raise their profile and standing.

It too has been great to see Under 16 player, Aaron Mitchell, after five years at the club, doing so well at QPR, where he is captaining the U16s. Although he's at QPR, Aaron, Balham Blazers through and through, still trains with Balham Blazers and comes to all U16 games.

Youth team player, Alec Fiddes, has also had a brilliant start to the season, scoring regularly for the Youth team and bagging a hat trick on his recent international debut for the England Independent Schools Football Association team, which is a fantastic achievement. Both Alec and fellow Youth team player, Tom Read, made the South of England team who defeated the North of England 5-0.

They've have also had other players playing representative football and have been delighted to welcome, along with many talented players from abroad, nineteen year old Hungarian international, Bence Katar, who has represented his country twenty one times at age group level, to the newly formed Balham FC First team squad.

They've also added a number of new coaches and team managers to their roster, all of whom have fitted in superbly and a new BBFC Murwill Medical Department, under the stewardship of Darren Gregoire, has been a huge bonus and is something no other club at their level can offer.

As they enter 2012 there is much to play for in league and cup competitions for all the teams, the target being to beat their best total to date of eighteen winners and runners up trophies in a single season. More important to them than winning things however is player development and playing the right way, the Balham Blazers way, which means always striving to play attractive football, pleasing to the eye, football that draws compliments such as our Under 14s drew recently, when they were told after their game, by the opposition manager, that watching them play was like watching Barcelona. This comparison has been made to other teams in the club in the recent past and as far as they're concerned it's the ultimate compliment.

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