Friday 14th June marked not only the opening game of Euro 2024, but also the second FJN 6 a side tournament. The tournament was hosted at Horsham FC and was in aid of Wolfram UK. The event was kindly sponsored by Health & Protection and Comarch.
Players from all over the UK got together to represent teams from Howden, Gallaghers, Lawsure / Clear Group, Green Insurance Brokers, Charles Taylor Assistance, Bupa Global, Now Health International, Allianz Partners, Axa Global Health and FJN Allstars (which was made up by players from United Healthcare, April International, Healix, Engage Health and Zurich).
The weather forecast was predicting thunder, lightning and an afternoon of constant rain so to say we got lucky is an understatement. The sun shone on the righteous!
The tournament kicked off at 12.30pm and saw FJN beat Lawsure 2-0 (I have to mention this as it was our only win!) and Howden edge passed team Charles Taylor Assistance with a 1-0 win. A total of 20 games were played in the group stages and this saw AXA Global Health, Gallaghers and Howden Employee Benefits all go unbeaten in their groups. Bupa Global were tournament top scorers with 9 goals from their 4 games and AXA Global Health had the meanest of mean defences as they did not concede a single goal. All of this resulted in AXA Global Health winning group A with Gallaghers finishing as runners up, and Charles Taylor Assistance winning group B with Howden Employee Benefits coming a close second by one single point.
Both semi final’s were very close fought and competitive affairs. AXA Global Health and Howden Employee Benefits locked horns on pitch A and Charles Taylor Assistance went toe to toe with Gallaghers on pitch B. AXA maintained their amazing record of still not conceding a goal by winning 1-0 and Charles Taylor Assistance’s James Sandford bagged a brace in a 2-1 win over Gallaghers. The final would be Charles Taylor Assistance v AXA Global Health – a particularly big achievement by CTA as they finished bottom of their group last year on minus 7 goal difference!
Charles Taylor flew out of the blocks in the final, in front of a big crowd, and took an early lead through James Sandford – the first goal AXA had conceded all tournament. Both teams went for the win and the game was more like a basketball match at times with attack after attack for each team. Ryan Watkins equalised for AXA before CTA took a firm grip on the game with two more strikes from the in-form Sandford (with hindsight, probably should have got player of the tournament with a hatrick in the final….). The score was 3-1 to CTA with just three minutes left. The kiss of death was planted firmly on the lips of the game by a CTA sub who shouted to his team mates ‘nothing silly boys!’. No sooner had this been said that Dean Tincombe scored to make the game 3-2 with just a minute or so to go. Axa pushed, CTA countered, and then, with the last kick of the game, Watkins scored again for AXA to make the scores 3-3. With no time to kick off again, the game went to a penalty shoot out for the second year running.
The quality of penalties was exceptional and left the two keepers with little or no chance of making any saves. After 5 kicks and 5 goals each, the dubious honour fell to both keepers to go head to head. AXA keeper Jordan Heir buried his spot kick before Geoff Foster of CTA blasted his kick against the upright resulting in AXA winning 6-5 on penalties. Huge congratulations to both CTA and AXA for contesting a great final and for getting into the spirit of the day. Congrats also to Dean Tincombe for winning player of the tournament.
Most of all, thanks to all who came along and played, supported, came out in the evening and contributed to the day. It would not happen without you! We should know the full amount raised in the next couple of days and will share when we know.
So, who’s up for next year?
