Soccer: Bay take heart despite loss

Bream Bay's John Harnett wasn't too disappointed that his side lost 2-0 to Kamo on Saturday - it was a big improvement on their last encounter and the club stalwart has the bigger picture in mind.

"I think we went down 7-3 last time, so a 2-0 loss against them isn't bad at all," the assistant coach mused.

Bream Bay have finally found their feet in the Northland Premier Men's football competition as they showed with their first win of the season against Madhatters last week.

"The boys were tickled pink about that. We've really come of age in the competition over the last few weeks, and if it wasn't for a few top class saves by CB's goalkeeper the week before, we might have beaten them too," Harnett said.

The young side have slowly developed during the season and are now making fewer lapses of the kind that saw them slump to heavy defeats in early rounds.

Harnett said the side's oldest player is only 21 or 22 giving the club good reason to hope for a bright future.

"Team coach Andy O'Hearn also has a very good 15th grade team coming through the club at the moment so the plan is to get some of those players joining the current squad over the next couple of years to make it even stronger."

He said morale had remained high despite a few "hidings" because they were well aware of the progress they had made.

"They've had a few bad patches but we're generally pretty happy with the quality of football they're playing and there's a lot of enthusiasm in the side."

Bream Bay have another good test of their progress this weekend when they travel to play league leaders and champions-in-waiting Kerikeri, who were too good for Madhatters on Saturday 3-0 at William Fraser Park. Tikipunga made their set-piece count against Central Brown winning 2-1 in the other match.