Maidenhead United Men’s players visited Oldfield Primary School as part of the Grassroots Community Day promotion. The students at the school had the most attendees on the day and won the visit of the squad as part of their support against Chippenham Town.
Led by Will de Havilland, a group of 20 Men’s players headed to Oldfield Primary School to deliver an assembly on resilience. The topic is one of the three core values at the school and presents a very transferable skill throughout football.
After a resounding welcome to the assembly hall by the students, our skipper went on to talk through a personal experience when he had to be resilient at the younger stages of his footballing career. He, himself will admit he’s had a long career since then, but not quite as long as he told the students – telling them he played in the first ever match at York Road!
The students then went through quizzing the players on all things football, offering some brilliant (and entertaining) questions to the squad. One of which had the whole hall in hysterics when Will had to answer for “who is the oldest in the squad?”. Offering himself, Harry Pritchard and Matt Robinson as options for the students to take their guess, fingers pointed equally at each from across the hall. They were given their answer as Pritch grew more, and more red in the face.
Josh Umerah joined in on the humour as when asked “who is the best player in the team?” he duly stepped forward, nominating himself for the title. But the nicest moment was perhaps when one students asked, “who is the kindest?”, to which the whole squad answered Manny Onariase.
Manny went on to do a brilliant demonstration with the kids, using a football as a prop to detail the ability to bounce back. Showing the students that the harder he threw the football onto the hall floor, the higher it bounced back up. Inferring that the harder you get knocked down, the bigger their bounce back from the problem should be.
A great take away for the students came from Sam Barratt when the question of “do you feel nervous before games?” was posed. He answered detailing that, ‘the more nervous you feel shows that you care more’ – using being more nervous about playing in a cup final as an example.
Oldfield Primary School continue their brilliant representation of Maidenhead and Maidenhead United as their U11s Girls team will travel to Hemel Hempstead on 24th February to play in the National League Tournament representing The Magpies. Everyone at Maidenhead United Football Club wishes them all the best of luck!
Share this post: