Glossop North End vs Gresley Rovers
It was definitely a better start to this terms FA Youth cup than the last one when we went down heavily at Nantwich, although the trip seemed just as long taking almost 3 hours to get there by coach, travelling through mountain range and valleys low.
When we did eventually reach our destination, a ground emulating the village of Roystone Vasey off the league of gentlemen TV programme gave us their hospitality, or rather lack of it!.
Many people told us that we would return from Glossop with nothing but cuts and bruises,again we proved them wrong. Playing against teenagers brought up on raw meat and feelings for nobody they had no response to the football played by the Gresley in this lucrative fixture.
For probably the first time this season we had a full squad apart from the injured Chris Bennett, to chose from, I think this brought the best out of the Gresley players knowing they were playing for their place.
The first half gave us pretty scrappy football on the whole with spells of quality passing far and few between. Gresley took the lead through a great individual goal from Lee Mitchell, skipping round a couple of defenders before dispatching a rocket into the top left hand corner.
After going in at the interval one-nil up we knew the order of the day was to shut up shop and get the killer second goal to finish the tie off. Glossop had other ideas and through attractive football put us on our very muddy heels for a good ten minutes. After seeing the spell out quality football came through and a somewhat fortunate goal came from Joe Brockley who, through being very tenacious, had the ball come to his feet and whipped in what seemed a harmless cross only to see it beat the keeper at his far post. I'm sure the keeper was the only player other than Joe himself who thought it was a goal. Two-nil and game over.
At this point we were very confident of victory and just so when the final whistle blew an extraordinary 9 minutes into injury time.
Well done to all, we will see Bedworth in the next round at the Moat on Wednesday 13th Oct 7.30 KO. PLEASE GIVE YOUR SUPPORT.
Individual performances improved, Jack Ward showing why he has stepped up to reserve level along with Johnie Guthrie, also Lewis Gadsby, Jack Coulson and Andy Mottershead, well done. Substitute Josh Butler came on for Mitchell and showed good potential for the future as he is still playing with the juniors.
Final score: Glossop town 0 v 2 Gresley Rovers
Dean Amess (asst manager)
Rovers performance rating 8/10
