Midway vs Gresley Rovers
Midway 0 - 3 Gresley Rovers
Scorers: Smith 2, Worth
Team: Ian Parker, Joe Tomlin, Danny Gee, Rich Foster, Dave Hatfield (c), Josh Gregory, Luke Taylor, Sam Worth, Joe Swift, Chris Smith, Paul Morton.
Subs: Tom Fletcher, Mark Shorthouse, Andy Lyons, Craig Harrison
We were away in the cup today against Midway, who are from the 3rd division, but as we know league status means nothing in cup games. As always we needed to work hard, because you can't switch off from any team.
Our warm up was once again hampered, by the lack of council official to open the dressing rooms, so we went into the game with little pre-match preparation. However this didn't affect us too much, as we soon got into our stride, and we were soon 1-0 to the good. This came from a great strike from Smith (although Morton was on the line to make sure) with only 5 minutes gone.
Once again we played some nice football, on the floor, but just lacked that finishing touch. Morton was unlucky, when he raced through, only to get there the same time as their keeper and picked up a deadleg. He continued on however, although you could tell he was in some discomfort. On the 20 minute mark Smith added a second, and it was no more than either him or us deserved. We seemed to have a quiet spell soon after, inviting Midway into the game (as we know this can be dangerous) however we never really looked too threatened as we went into half time.
We made a change at half time, bringing on Shorthouse for Morton (who's injury was taking it's toll). We spoke about not letting them back into the game, and that I thought we had it in "our locker" to put the game out of their reach.
We got started second half, and again were comfortable, but lacked that little extra that was required to finish the game off. With 15 minutes gone, we added Fletcher to things (replacing Smith who'd looked a lot sharper today). We then added a 3rd goal when from some decent build up play, Worth scored from an acute angle. To be fair to Midway they tried and worked hard, even hitting our cross bar from a corner but, our quality was just that little too much for them.
We were controlling things, and being honest should have scored more goals, but lacked the composure required in front of goal. With 10 minutes remaining we replaced Taylor for Lyons and as the game ran its course we actually played some great one touch football. This is something we work on in training on a regular basis, and we played about 9 or 10 passes in succession leaving Midway looking a little bemused.
Today, we never really looked troubled, however I feel that if we had of took all our chances (and beat the linesman) we could have made double figures. As we know in cup games it's about getting through to the next round, and this we did with relative ease. A convincing win (and a clean sheet) will do our confidence no harm whatsoever. I honestly feel that we are building something quite special; there were some great performances out there today. You need to take into consideration our average age and it's a pleasure seeing the week in week out improvements we continue to make. Yes we will make mistakes but we're learning how to recover from them quickly. Good overall performance today and through to the next round of the cup so let's keep believing in ourselves and fellow team mates well done everyone.
