Our big game had arrived, the second round of the national cup, and the boys travelled to Sunderland looking for revenge after their 3-1 victory over us previously. The banter on the bus was as usual, Denny and others telling stories from the weekend, with Denny himself sharing his classic! (If you want to here it find him behind Royal Mail). We arrived at our destination with our hopes up, although the weather put a slight downer on things. We went out to the referee telling us that we had to start right then and there, which gave us no time to warm up!
This lack of warm up was our downfall in the early minutes as Sunderland caught our defence on their heels and scored an early goal. As we got into the game our pace came through, with pretty boy Tom pushing through an injury. Our wingers were getting the better of their full backs and lead to us having some good chances! Cookson couldn't handle getting his hair wet for any longer so asked to be taken off, and was replaced by debutant Sam Mann, who started brightly with some great pressure from him and Aguero up top, and this pressure paid off as a free kick was won just outside their 18 yard box, with Alex G stepping up and putting the ball just infront of the keeper on a wet pitch which the keeper couldn't handle and just like that we were level! As the first half went on, we put a lot of pressure on them and could have scored from a number of chances! Our defence held firm in the first half with some good interceptions from full backs belly and nelson, and the centre backs clearing anything that came near them. The whistle went and we settled for level pegging at half time. Our usual team talk from Scotty got everybody pumped for the second half, which is becoming a frequent part of our team talks! This definitely gave us a boost as we went into the second half with more pressure onto their defence, which lead to another free kick won by our new striker Mann, who cleverly turned his man before getting snapped. This lead to another free kick for Alex G who was given instructions by captain Wrighty to hit the ball at the wall, with this looking a silly plan the ball ricocheted off the wall and past the keeper who had clearly been done by the deflection, and for the first time we lead! After this we started to defend a lot which was eventually our downfall, with Sam tracking back well but was to eager to get the ball and gave away a free kick. The free kick was put at Melling, who at first looked to have grasped the ball but lost it and the ball went through his legs and into the net. Straight away they won the ball again and sent it up field, winning a corner. The ball in was good and the header simple for their unmarked player to put in away, and our lead had been turned around. We needed to attack now, and mark took off belly after he started to cry after a horrible tackle from their winger, with his studs going into his knee. Batesy came on and was put on the right wing with a new look back three of nelson, alex and lorimer, but this proved to be too much for them to handle as they scored 3 goals in quick succession to kill off the game. We never stopped challenging though, and made a few good chances, but the game had already gone. The pitch had been suspect from the start with puddles on the pitch, and this got worse as the game went on, with the left hand side of the pitch being very hard to keep upright on. The game ended with us being defeated 6-2, although it wasn't a real showing of how the game could have ended up. A disappointment of today will have to go down to some players letting it down, although we can't name names... Maddison and Middleton have some explaining to do for their unavailability for the game. Man of the match had to go to alex for his goals, although both down to some misjudgements by their players.
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