The Royal Navy Senior Squad Football team based in Portsmouth was in BFG last week to play two matches.  The first game was against professional team, Borussia Mönchengladbach Under 23s, at their home ground and the second was with British Army (Germany) at JHQ. 

The members united for the week, with some having to leave their ships especially for the games which were part of a training camp in preparation for the Inter-services Competition which starts in March.

The Royal Navy played their first game against Borussia in very cold and wet conditions.  The Navy side matched the German team for long periods of the game.  The Navy defended well and one slip enabled the Borussia team to take it 1 nil into half time and the navy could have levelled but for an outstanding save by the German Goal keeper. The second half began much the same as the first and remained so until the last 15 minutes when the Navy were forced to substitute key players for injury.  The German side took advantage of that, scoring 2 goals through the sub position and a last minute penalty left the result 4 nil.

Team Captain, Marine Davie Carnes, confirmed that the game was as tough as it looked.  He said “We knew what Borussia would be like, keeping up the ball and holding possession for long periods of the game, and it’s fair to say their quality definitely shone through in the end.  That aside, I still think that we did pretty well”. 

Team coach, Cpt Steve Marr was feeling positive.  He said “To me the result was immaterial.  It was the performance that mattered to me.  The idea was to give all the players an opportunity to experience playing at this level and that’s what we did.  I thought the lads played really well on both sides”.

There was slight improvement with the weather two days later for the game at JHQ.   The Royal Navy were looking for a different type of opponent, and they certainly found them in the BA(G) team.  Within the first 5 minutes of this match there were more tackles than there were throughout the whole of the game against Borussia. 

Straight from the kick-off the RN nearly scored but hit the bar.  It was a good test for both sides. The first goal was scored 18 minutes into the game putting the RN in the lead, where they remained throughout the second half, scoring 4 more goals.  BA(G) scored a good goal too and they did well considering they only got the team together on Tuesday.  But it was the RN who were the stronger team with the final score 5-1.

Manager of BA(G) Cpt Pete Dawson, pointed out that the team had been formed at the last minute.  He said “We had a scratch team and It was 5 basic errors from us that lead to the Navy’s 5 goals, but we’ve got a tour planned in May and some more games lined up in Celle and Borussia Mönchengladbach and hopefully we’ll get our thirteen players back and we can make a good fist of it.  Then in May we hope to do better when we play against the Navy again at their place.”