Cardinal Langley celebrate spiritual and sporting success

Students at Cardinal Langley RC have been celebrating spiritual and sporting success recently.

Pictured below are19 Year 9 students made their confirmation, at St Thomas More Parish Church

Cardinal Langley RC High U16 reach the English Schools Football elite semi final

We are extremely proud to have reached the semi-finals of the English Schools U16 Elite competition. The school have been drawn to play either Cardinal Heenan or Thomas Telford at home in March.

Below is a write up from team manager R Greenwood:

This incredible journey began with an admin error. Rather than entering into the regular U16 competition, CLRCHS were entered into the U16 ELITE competition which allows an unlimited number of academy players, here at Cardinal Langley we have one.

Our first opponents from Harrogate were coached by an ex-professional footballer and were a team that had their names on the back of their shirts and arrived with confidence and high expectation. However, the basic fundamentals of football where epitomised by Cardinal Langley that day, who won every header, every second ball and ran like their lives depended on it!

In the next round we drew a school from Middlesbrough. A team with 3 Middlesbrough academy players, 2 Sunderland players and 1 Newcastle player. At first the we seemed a little overwhelmed but we grew into the game … and manged to go 4-0 up, with the game finishing 5-2! This was when the team really started to believe.

In the next round we drew Priestnall who had previously knocked our current U16 side out in their 3 previous ESFA campaigns in Y7,8 and 9! It seemed they were going to do this again as with 3 minutes left of the game, they led 2-1. It was a game of missed chances for us the game seemed all but over until captain Charlie Hall dragged his team back in it with an acrobatic equaliser! We then went on to win this game 4-2 in extra time.

In the quarter finals we drew Kepler of Sunderland a very strong footballing school . However we managed to dig deep and overcome another strong side.

We currently await the winners of Thomas Telford and Cardinal Heenan for our semi-final which has been drawn to play here at Cardinal Langley.

Having taught these students since they were 11 years old and managed their football team from year 7 has been a privilege. To watch them grow and play with such determination, heart and spirit has made the school proud. However, whenever this journey ends, we have the upmost respect and admiration for how well they have worked as a team to reach this level of performance