Year 8 Trip to Eindhoven, The Netherlands

During the Easter holidays, 29 of our Year 8 students had the chance to travel to PSV Eindhoven to enjoy a four day football trip. The students were given an opportunity of a lifetime: experiencing the training regime of a professional footballer at The PSV training ground; playing two fixtures against local teams and getting a behind-the-scenes tour of The PSV stadium. Alongside this, students also had time to shop in the centre of Eindhoven, enjoying an exciting day at a theme park and taking on each other in a very competitive game of bowling!

As a group, our RHS students formed a 7-a-side girls team and two 11-a-side boys teams, one experienced and one a newly-formed team for the trip. On the first night of matches, the girls were victorious winning 5-3. This was followed by our experienced boys team drawing 4-4 in a great battle and, unfortunately, our newly formed team ending their first game in defeat.

On our last night we had our second fixtures against another local team. There was another great performance from the girls team, this time just missing out on the win drawing 4-4.

The fixture looked a little different for our boys team as they combined as one team due to the local opposition not having enough players to have two teams. From the first whistle you couldn’t take your eyes off the game. Both teams battled hard; creating chances and putting in 100% effort throughout the game.

The boys put in a great shift, winning challenges across the pitch. However, with 30 minutes of the game left, our team was behind. Then, turning it around with 20 minutes to go, James B scored, followed by an equaliser from Dragos T making it 5-5. With 5 minutes to go Charlie C scored a great goal putting the RHS boys teams ahead - celebrating with a team bundle!

Students experienced two training sessions from experienced PSV coaches playing on the academy training pitch. Both sessions were at a high level of intensity focusing on the technical ability of the students, shooting techniques and 2v2/3v3’s followed by a game against each other. The students also got a behind-the-scenes tour of The PSV stadium seeing sights, such as the pitch, the changing room and a look at their museum full of trophies.

Thank you to all of the staff who accompanied the trip and thank you to the students for representing the school positively throughout the residential.