Month: November 2016

The team got off to a shaky start having arrived late for the game, but the girls turned this around quickly with a really professional attitude, and after the warm up the girls were ready to play.

The team started off well with some great play between the midfield and defence, and keeping the majority of the possession. But St Joseph’s weren’t going to make it easy for us, their players making it had for us to break through to the other side of the pitch.

After a team talk, the team knew what needed to be done to gain the upper hand,  and did so extremely well. The forwards moved higher up the pitch creating more space in the midfield,  allowing the midfield players more time and space to play the ball and pick passes. Once into their stride, the Woodbridge players played some excellent hockey, with Millie and Tess scoring to finish off the game.

It was a fantastic team performance, resulting in a 2-0 win for Woodbridge.

The U14A girls’ hockey squad came away with an impressive 5-0 victory against Culford on Saturday. Issy Stewart and Tori McCarroll scored a goal each, and a hard shot from the top of the circle from Verity Hobday resulted in another, all after Saffron Holliday opened the scoring with a brace of well-taken goals which owed much to her tenacity in the circle. Flora Pitt came up to play centre half, orchestrating another dominant game; and special mention also goes to Grace Childs who played her first game this season for the A team and then played for the U15s in their second half, helping them to a 3-0 victory, and being instrumental in setting up at least one of the goals to earn lots of praise from Mr Wright.

A great game and some great goals, hurray! We played really well, put some good defending with some great attacking play and Iris Morton put us ahead in the first half after lots of near misses!  The second half saw a great goal in the corner by Emily Outen and another one by Anna Jackson – tremendous! Final score 3-0 to Woodbridge.

Well done all and player of the game was Anna Jackson.

The Junior first team produced a dominating performance against RHS, winning 6-1.  It was a physical match from the start with some pushing and shoving but the Woodbridge girls managed to stand their own.  Olivia Buchanan was outstanding and made her mark on the match within minutes. RHS could not cope with her power and speed on the ball.  Olivia put the Woodbridge team ahead with a great strike at a short corner. Unfortunately the celebration was short lived as RHS took advantage of Woodbridge’s lapse in concentration and defensive disciplines and scored their own goal a minute later.  After this Molly Marshall and Ella Walker never gave them another sniff in defence. With outstanding marking, confident stepping up, good tackling and accurate distribution they set the tone for the rest of the match.  Woodbridge played great passing hockey as a team and produce excellent hockey to watch. Positional play and decision making were at a very high level. Bea Thomas was brilliant in her work in the press and putting RHS under pressure and then leading well again to attack.  Woodbridge peppered the RHS goal with shots and penalty corners, bringing the best out of RHS’ very good goalkeeper.

Olivia scored another goal before half time. This was followed by Clara Simpson scoring from a well-executed penalty corner variation.  After a deserved rest at half time, Woodbridge continued their fine form and passing play.  Olivia Buchanan scored another 2 goals before Ella Walker scored the final goal after every player having a part to play, transferring and passing well. Clara Simpson received the ball in the D, having assessed her options well, and swiftly moved the ball to Ella at left midfield, who slotted a perfect effort into the far post.  Perfection!

Well done to every player: Molly Marshall, Ella Walker, Annabel Nicholass, Jessica Elmer, Olivia Buchanan, Issy Eaton, Katie Norman, Clara Simpson, Bea Thomas and Emily Whyte.  Player of the match went to the unstoppable goal scorer of the day, Olivia Buchanan.  Thanks to all the parents and staff who supported the match.

Mrs Davis and her squad of singers and readers did extraordinary justice to the desperate poetry of the First World War.  This was no helter-skelter parade of these you have loved, but a much more deeply considered and richly analysed contemplation of lives and words torn from barely imaginable circumstances.  And it is this: the impossibility of placing ourselves, the reader or listener, anywhere near the action, in imagination let alone reality, that adds power to their evocation.  Tragic stories, such as Wilfred Owens’, add extra poignancy but in themselves should not encourage us to admire the poetry out of pity or duty.  No, this, for Mrs Davis, and for her audience, is poetry of the highest order regardless of its setting, of glory lost, or of hope deceived.

Padre Cook has many years of service in the forces behind him, and so brought a telling intimacy to this year’s Service of Remembrance.  The poppy, its frailty and beauty if one considers the European variety; its deadly potency to rip asunder and take over the self if instead one dwells on the opium variety.  Theatres of war that leave behind ghostly remnants of international interference.  Graveyards that honour the fighter, the medic and the chaplain side by side.  Peace that must not simply be hoped for, but must be fought for and preserved through strength of purpose.  No easy messages: but warfare and loss, and the reasons for them, deserve our proper contemplation, however difficult to hear, and however much we may need to debate the strategies we employ to mitigate them.  Our cadets paraded, the flags dipped in honour, the wreaths were laid, we prayed for the departed, and the lone trumpet sounded over Woodbridge as the maroons burst overhead.  Never forget.

It may have been a damp November day but somehow the cross country athletes from Woodbridge School brushed that aside with considerable ease. Spirits were high, with all four teams competing following their wins in the Suffolk leg. Anything seemed possible. We were up against seven counties including the might of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

The fact that Woodbridge School had never had a Team qualify for the National Finals gave the task ahead some context. 21 Teams (top three from each of the seven counties) would be reduced to three for Nationals in each of the four races.

First race of the day was the Junior Girls (u14) and although the team had worked hard and were likely to finish as a fairly compact unit, we were not expecting this young group to qualify.
How wrong we were!

Bea Thomas ran an exceptional race and every athlete raced for the line making every position count. The result – A Trip to Nationals by finishing third, beating 4th by just two points.
Individual results were Bea Thomas 5th, Molly Marshall 15th, Amy Goddard 20th, Issy Eaton 34th, Cecily Royal-Dawson 35th, Anna Jackson 66th.
Congratulations Junior Girls!

Second race was the Junior boys (u14), our strongest team and the one where we genuinely felt we had our first chance of qualification. We were not disappointed as the Woodbridge vests soon made their way to the front of the race and the boys finished second, a single point behind the school that won.
Charlie Turner was the star performer running an exceptionally well judged race to close in on the lead pack and then power home for second place.
Individual results were Charlie Turner 2nd, Kit Evans-Lombe 7th, Henry Dinwiddy 15th, Will Franklin 22nd, Edward Rufford 32nd, Tom Turner 47th.
Congratulations Junior Boys!

Next up were the Inter Girls (u16). Perhaps an outside chance we thought. Better than that the girls qualified for Nationals in a strong second place. Sarah Barker and Amy Graham worked their way through the field and were full of running in the closing stages to claim 3rd and 4th respectively. Special mention should also go to Charlotte Dinwiddy who ran a brave attacking race to finish 23rd.
Individual results were Sarah Barker 3rd, Amy Graham 4th, Charlotte Dinwiddy 23rd, Milly Buckingham 31st, Sophie Graham 38th, Victoria Burrows 40th.
Congratulations Inter Girls!

Final race of the day saw the Inter Boys (u16) line up. Whilst the Team realistically knew qualification was unlikely, the boys had trained well and were keen to improve on last years 7th place.
With Nathan Goddard leading from the front with another of his powerful displays for 2nd place, the boys packed well for the team to come home in 5th place.
Individual results were Nathan Goddard 2nd, George Rufford 19th, Daniel Davies 28th, Alex Evans Lombe 29th, Tom Harrington 35th, Nathaniel Gunn 42nd.
With that effort is has to be – Congratulations Inter Boys!

So off to Nationals we go. Formby, Lancashire on Saturday 3rd December.
With some 4000 secondary schools in England only 25 make it through to the Nationals and Woodbridge School will be in three of the four races.

We are one of only three schools in England to qualify more than two teams – Now that is something!

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Poor lad.  He had it all.  Loadsamoney and much else besides.  Women too.  So much for all that, when Death came for a visit.

The morality play that is Everyman has been with us for over 600 years, recasting itself to every new generation sometimes simply through its staging and sometimes more fundamentally through a reinterpretation.  Carol Ann Duffy’s 2015 adaptation is taut with disquiet and laced with unsettling references to our generation’s louche, destructive underbelly.  The Sixth Form cast (plus Everyboy!) did extraordinary justice to her message in a performance that was mesmerising, witty, abrasive, and electric in its energy and capacity to shock – like a static jolt when one least expects it which almost hurts, yet leaves one cautiously excited for the next.  I don’t relish an encounter with Death such as this (the reckoning would not go so well, for one thing): all Cockney-mocking swagger, with a grim certainty to her every action that the Kray’s might have been pleased to employ.  No wonder Everyman, brilliantly tortured, by himself as much as by her, wheeled to no avail in search of respite. God’s resigned despair seemed all the more depressing as a result: helpless in the abject failure of her glorious project – save for her ability to call in Death to make amends.  Family and knowledge, goods and deeds, friends and fairweather came and went, leaving Everyman to his fate, and the audience to its thoughts: we should do better, be better, check our account for a little more on the credit side, and look well beyond our own tiny horizons.  How timely.  Frighteningly so.

Brilliant – in performance, in staging, and in direction.  My congratulations to cast and crew on a stunningly compelling hour’s entertainment (such a lighthearted word for something so powerful).  The images, and the message, will live with me for quite a while.

A story in the EADT yesterday about the success of Woodbridge School riders at the NSEA championships.