by Jeff King (With Thanks To Colin Wotherspoon)
Durham FA Minor Cup 4th Round - Saturday 14th December 2024
Chester-le-Street United Reserves 0 v 1 Jarrow AFC Reserves
This was a very disappointing result for United's Reserves. Going out of any competition in the quarter finals is hard to take but even more so when you're unable to field so many of your first choice players through injuries and unavailability.
You can never say for certainty that had certain players been available then the result would have been different but given the circumstances it would have been nice to have had the opportunity to see if would have made a difference.
You do though have to give credit to Jarrow who progress to the semi finals because at the end of the 90 minutes they simply scored more goals than United did and they did whatever it took to keep that 1 - 0 lead which was gifted to them by a United mistake.
Head Coach Colin Wotherspoon was happy with his team's overall attitude and never say die spirit but felt that his side lacked that final quality in the area of the pitch that wins you games.
The Chester build up play was very good at times and but for one long ball from Jarrow keeper Jamie Brown that United's keeper Reilly Irwin did not deal with costing his side us dearly. they defended well with a make shift back four.
That long ball saw Irwin make one bad decision to come off his line ending up in no mans land not getting to the ball first allowing Jonathan Lally to win the race and then lift the ball over him into the empty net for the only goal of the game.
Matty Henderson and Keane Mitchell both playing out of position did really well playing as the two centre backs and Joe Sykes and Finn Cook did well to make up the back four that played together for the first time.
Ollie Dixon looked a real threat first half breaking the lines with some positive running with the ball but United either didn’t get the breaks or our final pass failed to penetrate the stubborn Jarrow back line.
TEAM : 1. Reilly Irwin 2. Joe Sykes 3. Finn Cook 4. Harvey Lawrence 5. Keane Mitchell 6. Matty Henderson 7. Kymani Severin 8. Olly Dixon (c) 9. Jude Anderson 10. Ethan Stobbart 11. Evan Cubby
SUBS : Joe Guest for Cook - Leo Fasuan for Stobbart
MAN of the MATCH : Keane Mitchell
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