With the 2015 season entering its 2nd round phase and our juniors fighting their way through to the knock-out semi-finals, our collective under U16 team had very little time to prepare as a “new” team for the very first Rock-a-Fella’s U16 Football Tournament of Light. This year's tournament was the first edition and Kuils River AFC were proud to be one of the few Northern Suburbs LFA teams invited to participate.

2015 Team Captains with the Trophy

The team was assembled from our Under 15 and under 17 teams. Our super league coach, Patrick Slinger, was roped in as Head Coach and along with Aldrich Burmeister as Team Manager and Brent Machelm, our Junior Chairman looking after logistics, every minute was made to count to ensure Kuilsriver AFC would be ready.

The tournament Opening and Draw Evening was held Friday the 31st of July 2015 in Rocklands Mitchells Plain. RockaFella’s Football Club really put their best foot forward, and along with their sponsors, made sure we felt welcome, were well fed and excited for the duration of the evening. Kuilsriver’s Junior Chairman, Team Head Coach, Team Manager and Team Captain was present at this well put together affair, and for the first time saw who our opponents would be in the tournament… all 36 of them!

Within minutes it became very clear that our boys were going to have a tough run no matter how we looked at the road ahead, at least 70% of the opponents were development teams… football academies who were well sponsored with plenty of financial and technical know how support. This would be next level stuff for most of our boys and we all smiled in anticipation. After a few pics of our captain with the other teams and the massive trophy, and the draw to see which group we fall in and who we play, the management team immediately started planning how our boys were to approach their games, all 3 days’ worth.