OVER 100 youth football teams from all over the south west descended on Colyton when the town's YFC held its annual tournament

OVER 100 youth football teams from all over the south west descended on Colyton when the town's YFC held its annual tournament This event is the youth teams major fundraising event of the year and saw visitors at the Peace Memorial playing fields from Colyton, Seaton, Lyme Regis, Axminster and Honiton, as well as Plymouth, Newton Abbot, Dorchester, Weymouth, Minehead, Bristol and even teams from Swindon returning for a second year. Saturday went smoothly but Sunday was always going to be a logistical challenge and lived up to expectations with 73 teams comprising over 550 players competing in over 200 matches!The first difficulty was trying to get in excess of 600 cars all arriving within a half hour of each other onto the field and parked whilst causing as little disruption to local residents as possible. This was dealt with brilliantly by the car parking team and was a credit to them all. All the arriving teams then had to be registered, which was going well until it was discovered four teams had arrived that weren't on the fixture list.The tournament organiser then had a half hour spell where his hair turned grey, then most of it fell out but, after this incident and a lot of juggling, revised fixtures were posted and matches got under way with only a slight delay. Things proceeded to run smoothly with only a few minor disagreements about interpretation of rules.I would personally like to thank all of the team involved in the running of the event for what I believe is the biggest ever single day event of it's kind ever run in Colyton.The managers and parents of Colyton players all put a lot of effort in but a lot of the people who came along to help have no current association with the Youth Football club as their children have now progressed into senior football but they gave their time freely and without them it would be impossible to run such an event.At the end of a long hot day they still had the goodwill and patience to stay on and make sure the field was returned to normal.I would probably take up most of the paper if I was to thank everybody involved, but I do sincerely thank everybody on behalf of the youth of Colyton for their efforts no matter how great or small.I would also like to express heartfelt thanks to Tournament sponsors CRW accountants and Pete and Tony at Colyford butchers who not only provided the sausages and burgers, but were kindly were on call to replenish stocks. I would also like to congratulate all of the referees on their hard work, the effort they put in was outstanding.I have already received many compliments on a superbly run event from local residents, the police, town councillors and have also received email thanks from teams from Plympton, Bishops Lydeard, Bristol and Swindon.Apologies to anyone who had their day disrupted but the club hopes that bringing so many people into the town, some for the first time, can only be good for business in this financial climate.