Sidmouth Under-9s Raiders and Warriors were lucky to escape the weather and play their Exeter Youth League fixtures against Brixington Blues and Brixington United.

Up first for the Raiders were a well organised Blues team who started very strongly taking an early lead. However, in an extremely entertaining end-to-end game the Raiders dug deep and came back strongly with goals from Michal Bielawski and Man of the Match Joe Anning, but unfortunately couldn’t hold on, ultimately going down to a single goal defeat.

Next up Raiders had a change in fortunes as they beat Brixington United by a single goal margin with what was an outstanding whole-team performance with every player involved putting a shift in.

David Clapp and Liam Dalton stood out for their tireless contributions with young Dalton named the Raiders Man of the Match.

The Warriors were in a generous mood against Brixington United giving their opponents a three goal-lead in the first seven minutes!

However, a magnificent Man of the Match performance from Charley Turley helped to reduce the deficit to one goal by half-time.

With spectator anxiety levels rising the Warriors levelled early in the second half and, thanks to excellent performances from Jamie Pitter, Anthony Nita, eventually pulled away to claim success.

In their second game against Brixington Blues there was to be no repeat of the indifferent start to the previous game and an excellent squad performance saw the Warriors from the early exchanges.

Toby Edmunds secured a hat-trick for the second week in a row and despite a late fight back from the Blues Sidmouth played out a commanding performance. This game demonstrated the strength in depth with fine performances from the defensive unit of Callum French and Man of the Match Finn Upsher.