LADYMEAD Community School’s Year 11 (U-16) football team have narrowly missed out on playing at the City of Manchester Stadium.

The Taunton side went down 3-0 against a strong side from Howard of Effingham School, Surrey, in the semi-final of the national RAF Schools Cup at RAF Cosford near Wolverhampton.

The final is played at Manchester City's home ground.

However, they did remarkably well to get that far with two-thirds of English secondary schools taking part in the competition which features 50,000 students each year.

Ladymead qualified for the national stages by becoming, for the second time in a row, Somerset Champions.

They defeated champions from Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and, in the quarter-final, the West Midlands to reach the last four – many of them picked from schools far larger than Ladymead.

Ladymead teacher St John Cox, who helped coach the team along with parents Ian Cooke and Sam Hutchings, said: “The whole team performed magnificently throughout the competition and were only beaten by a team who may well come through as the national champions.”

To add to their recent achievements Ladymead have won the District League for the fifth year in succession and will also contest the District Cup final which they have also won for the last two years.