U18s: Grimsby Town 0 – 1 Bradford City – Saturday 21st November 2015
Last Saturday saw us travel over to the east coast where we were entertained by Grimsby Town. Grimsby went in to the game on the back of gaining their first point of the season drawing with Doncaster Rovers the week before, whilst we were looking to get back on track having lost our last four games. We were buoyed by having Kesi Omolokun, Luca Mellor and Danny Devine available again after all being involved with the first team squad. The game was played in difficult blustery conditions.
Playing with the wind in the first half we got off to the best possible start when Ellis Hudson put us 1-0 up in the opening three minutes after Niah Payne’s header sent him clear and he calmly finished in the corner of the net. Minutes later it was Hudson again whose pace took him beyond the Grimsby Full Back but his cross was cleared by a recovering defender. On thirteen minutes Grimsby had their first chance to trouble our goal, after Alex Laird slipped leaving their Striker to dispossess him, with a clear run at goal, Alex somehow managed to recover and make a last ditch tackle to avert the danger. We were having some good spells of possession at this point and in the twentieth minute were unlucky not to double our lead after Niah Payne played Danny Devine in down the left and his cross was met by Payne but his header went inches wide. Further chances in the half fell to Niah Payne, Ellis Hudson and Sumaili Cissa but a combination of good goalkeeping and poor finishing kept the score at 1-0 at the break.
In the second period Grimsby started positively but with the wind in their favour the final pass lacked the quality to trouble our goal. On fifty five minutes Chandler Hallwood had to be at his best to tip a shot from Grimsby’s winger around the post for a corner. On seventy minutes Danny Devine had chance to double our lead after being put through by Sumaili Cissa but his shot went agonisingly wide of the post. On 75 minutes we made three changes to give the three u16s that were on the bench some game time, namely Sam Wright, Neil Patience and Casey Taglione. It was Taglione who got in the action straight away when he got on the end of Xander McBurnie’s wide freekick but his header was saved by the goalkeeper. We managed to see out the remainder of the game and deservedly took the three points.
Overall it was a good performance in difficult conditions and got us back on the winning track. We have a free week on Saturday so our next game is at home down at Rawdon Meadows against Hartlepool United on Saturday 5th December.