Scottish Success for Leeds Futsal Families
Anything Manchester can do, Leeds can do better! You have, I am sure, heard of Gary and Philip Neville, the footballing brothers whose careers began at Manchester United. Leeds, of course, can also legitimately claim Jackie Charlton, though Manchester must be allowed to lay claim to his brother, Bobby.
In addition to our half of the Charltons, we had the Grays, Eddie and Frankie. Well now Leeds has gone another one better than Manchester with 2 sets of brothers who are making waves in the ‘mini beautiful game’.
Ryan Jepson of Meanwood and Dominic Hallas of Cookridge, both 16 years of age, recently travelled to Scotland as part of the Leeds Fives futsal Squad to take part in the Perth Youth Tournament. The boys played for and coached their team which reached the quarter finals of the tournament.
In June, they will also lead the West Yorkshire team out when they will be joint captains at the Junior National Futsal Finals, which will take place at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield.
Not to be outdone, however, younger brothers, Josh Jepson and Jamie Hallas also made their way North of the border. As the Futsal Yorkshire Academy (of which Josh and Jamie are a part) could not raise a team, the organisers made arrangements for the two eleven year olds to ‘guest’ for the Perth Youth Futsal under 12s team.
The result was that both boys have been asked to play again next year. In fact, the coaches of the Perth team told the lads they should persuade their parents to buy houses in the Scottish town. “And if buying a house here is a problem,” the coach told their Mums, “I don’t mind - as long as you charter a jet and fly them up here each time we need them!”
Like their older siblings, the younger boys also will step out at the National Championships to co-captain and represent their county: indeed all four boys have tasted success on this stage before. Ryan and Dominic captained the West Yorkshire team that became National Champions in 2006, whilst Josh and Jamie brought home the silver medals with the West Yorkshire under 10s team last year. They will all be hoping to repeat and improve upon their previous performances at the competition.
And it doesn’t end there! Dom and Jamie’s youngest brother, Matthew (not pictured), who is nine, has recently been selected to play for the West Yorkshire under 10 futsal team too.
Extremely popular across the world, futsal is now one of the fastest growing sports in Britain. It is the only 5-a-side game sanctioned by FIFA and UEFA and is on the list of potential sports for the 2012 London Olympic Games.
Many of the Worlds greatest players, including Ronaldinho, Robinho, Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo grew up playing the sport and attribute their silky skills to the game. With the number of foreign players infiltrating the Premier League, the FA are now promoting futsal as a means of developing home grown players for the Football League the future England team.