The Winter League U16's Championships for 2024/25 saw ten teams entered split into two groups based on geographical location with Watford placed in the North Division alongside sides from Barnet, Hitchin, Northampton & WL Penguins.

Sunday's tournament at Watford Woodside had 4 teams as WL Penguins had to withdraw due to lack of players, so each team was awarded a 5-0 win, so now only the top two sides would qualify for Division One in the second half of the season and be joined by two teams from the South Division.

The first game of the afternoon was Watford v Hitchin, a Hertfordshire Derby which Watford won convincingly 16-1.

One more win would mean a top 2 finish.

Next up was Northampton. Northampton had a great start taking the lead before Watford scored 4 in a row before Northampton scored again for 4-2.

Another goal from Watford made the half time score 5-2. Northampton started the second half by scoring first to make it 5-3.

Watford then scored 4 unanswered goals to finish the game 9-3.

With a top two finish secured, the final game of the afternoon was against Barnet. They were also undefeated and so the winner of the game would end top of the North Division, a nice marker for the season.

The game started with Barnet scoring a penalty. Rishi then scored an equaliser from a man up. Then Barnet scored 3 unanswered goals to make it 4-1 with 3 minutes left of the first half. Watford then scored 2 goals the first from Illija and the second, with just 1 second of the half left, by Luka.

The second half was more intense than the first. Luka scored following a man up to bring the game level. Barnet were lucky to keep a full team as one of their players did a kick to the head that would have scored 5 points in taekwondo but resulted in a 20 second exclusion.

Then Barnet scored to take the lead again. Then following another exclusion for Barnet Theo equalised to bring the game to 5 a piece.

With 23 seconds later Barnet took the lead for the sixth time for 5-6 with just 4 minutes of the game remaining. But with just 2 minutes left Barnet had an exclusion that Illija converted via the man up to bring it back to level at 6-6.

There was then a tense one and a half minutes of great defence from both teams before Barnet had a player excluded with 34 seconds left.

Watford moved the ball to the left 2 metre line and found Luka who was amazed that no one came to tackle him and with the composure of someone twice his age moved towards the goal faking all the time before nicely lobing the keeper.

This was the first time Watford had taken the lead and with only 15 seconds left they managed to see out the game. Parental support was on another level. The boys showed great maturity to keep their composure in a very tight game. Huge thanks to Coach Adam and Walter who I suspect went home for a lie down.

Both Barnet and Watford will progress to the next round and will be joined by the top two teams from the South London area.