Oldbury United vs Gresley Rovers
Semi conscious – Andy Parker – Burton Mail
There was an air of inevitability about Gresley Rovers’ progress into the semi-finals of the Banks’s League Cup at the Cricketts on Saturday.
All the omens were there before a ball was kicked. In years of heated rivalry for league and cup honours, Oldbury have never yet managed to beat the South Derbyshire side.
And with Rovers having become a regular fixture in the last four of the league’s knock-out competition, no-one was going to bet on Oldbury burying their jink this time.
Yet, with the gods plying their part too as wind and rain swept ferociously across the field of combat, it was a close-run thing.
Rovers boss Frank Northwood pointed to a trio of chances that striker Graham Jones allowed to go begging as a pointer to the difference in class between the two sides.
But United went close as the width of a post to snatching a barely deserved draw when Moat Ground old boy Dave Morrison struck the woodwork in the final stages of a wearying battle.
Keeper Bob Aston, who did as much as anyone to ensure Rovers a place in the last four, summed it up perfectly afterwards.
“It was a good workman like performance. You can’t play 100 per cent football all the time. It’s always hard against Oldbury. Today we beat them with class goals.”
Both those goals came in the space of barely two first half minutes and, if the truth be known, were against the run of play.
Oldbury had been causing all the problems until full back Dave Beattie set the home alarm bells ringing with a cross that keeper Steve Johnson flapped against the bar.
Two minutes later Jones picked the Oldbury locks again with a superb knock to Andy Moore on the right and Tracey Norton finished off the cross with a magnificent economical header from six yards.
“Within a minute Johnson was saving superbly when Ian Wells flighted a quickly taken free kick onto the end of Martin Haskins’ perfectly-timed run. From Moore’s corner Paul Acklam climbed above the keeper to head what turned out to be the winning goal.
Richard Denby saw a shot cleared off the line after beating the keeper to Haskins’ cross, then Jones raced clear again onto Norton’s super through ball only to allow the keeper to save at his feet.
In between times, though, it was Oldbury who were enjoying the most possession and it was hardly a surprise when Ian Bosworth got onto the end of Keith Humphries cross to emphatically head the home side back into the game.
After the turnaround, though, it became a different ball game. Gresley, now with the wind and rain at their backs made Oldbury come looking for possession but again Jones disappointed when he broke clear onto Wells’s square pass.
Wells then retired, victim of a groin strain, leaving his colleagues to huff and puff through a freezingly frantic last half hour that had little to commend it until Morrison first brought an impressive diving save from Aston, then nipped onto substitute Paul Fernihough’s back pass only to shoot against the woodwork.
Oldbury United (1) 1
Gresley Rovers (2) 2
Scorers: Bosworth 43 (Oldbury United); Norton 17, Acklam 18 (Gresley Rovers).
Oldbury United: Johnson, Loughran, Humphries (Perrins 47), Sorrell (O’Conner 75), Vowles, Wootton, Swinhoe, Bosworth, Rossi, Morrison, Unitt.
Gresley Rovers: Aston, Beattie, Perry, Denby, Haskins, Page, Moore, Norton, Acklam, Wells (Fernihough 67), Jones. Sub not used: Smith.
Gresley man-of-the-match: Martin Haskins.
Referee: K H Hoare (Kings Norton).
Attendance: 150
