Football Report

Below is a summary of the final weekend of SPS Football:

Wednesday 13th March saw a nail biting fixture on the 3G where the 1st XI battled it out for the Lonsdale Cup against Harrodian. Despite 2 fantastic free kicks from Harrodian’s attacking midfielder, St Paul’s were able to finish the game 2-2 and took the game to penalties. With a large crowd forming to watch the local derby, St Paul’s were error-free in the penalty shoot-out and won the match 2-2 (4-2) to claim the School’s first piece of silverware of the season. Excellent penalties came from Thomas Evans-Alcantara, Aris Alexandridis, Lorenzo Massi and Nicholas Tredre whilst a match winning save came from Nikil Malik. 

History was made on Saturday 16th March for St Paul’s School as the Southern Independent League was won by 4 of the St Paul’s teams. The Southern Independent League is played between 6 high caliber independent schools, each of which play the majority of their block fixture list to compete for the league title. Despite a number of cancelled fixtures throughout the season due to poor weather, the league season came to the end with St Paul’s vs Harrow. All of these games had a huge amount to play for with Harrow holding top of the League places on Saturday morning, meaning that our senior squads had to win all of their matches if they wanted to clinch the titles off Harrow. It was a hugely successful day across the board, but it was the senior teams, where many were pulling on their St Paul’s playing shirts for the last ever time, who stole the highlights. 

The 1st XI snatched a last minute winner in a fantastic, well matched encounter with a goal from Aris Alexandridis to start the celebrations with a with a 2-1 win on Harrow’s incredible 1st XI pitch to take the league title off the hosts. The 2nd XI were outstanding in their match, sweeping aside their top of the table opponents stringing together some high class attacking phases to win their match 4-1 and secure the 2nd XI league. The 3rd XI were able to claim the 3rd XI league with their 3-1 win vs Harrow meaning that the 1st XI, 2nd XI and 3rd XI all walked away with League titles this weekend. Congratulations to all pupils and staff involved in those winning teams. 

The 4th XI were able to do wonders for their season’s goal difference, winning their match 9-0 and the 5th XI beat harrow 4-1 to finish off their seasons with each team only losing 1 game. A special mention to Shyam Thobhani for his ‘cheeky chip’ at the end of the match to score and for being the only St Paul’s pupil to be part of a winning team every week this season! Unfortunately Harrow couldn’t put out the numbers in the 6th XI match and disappointingly this was cancelled on Friday night. 

The U16A team were held to a 1-1 draw on our 1st XI pitch, but their point was enough to claim the 2024 league title to finish off their fantastic season. The U16B team faced a very strong opposition and lost their match 3-1 and the U16C team drew their match 1-1 with chances to win the game falling to both teams. The U16D team defeated Harrow 9-2 with a high class hat-trick from Parker Whiting to finish their unbeaten season strongly. 

The U14A team won their match 3-2, showing off how strong their team can play when they play as a team which is exciting for the future of Football at St Paul’s. The U14B team showed that there is strength that continues through the year group and finished their unbeaten season with a 3-1 victory. The U14C also won their match vs Harrow with a 6-2 result whilst the U14D team were beaten away from home in a well matched 4-2 loss. 

The final block results were: St Paul’s won 9, drew 2 and lost 2.

Written by Tom Vickers, Head of Football