by Jeff King (With A Huge Nod To Colin Wotherspoon)
Wearside League Division 1 - Saturday 15th March 2025 Barnard Castle 2 v 1 Chester-le-Street United Reserves
With the First Team not having a game United's Reserves went into a tough encounter against a physical strong Barnard Castle bolstered by some of the younger members of the first team squad.
Barnard castle are having a very good season in Division 1 currently sitting 2nd top. United also we went into the game with more than normal amount of substitutes due to having a huge national cup game away in Manchester on Weds afternoon.
They didn’t want any injuries as they knew this would be a tough physical test for the young reserve side against Barnard Castle and bringing in several players to combat this and also save legs for Wednesday was crucial.
Barnard Castle started the game strongly and forced United to be switched on in their defending but when the game settled down United started to get their attacking game in action and had 3 great opportunity’s to take the lead.
Dan Walton should of connected better at the back post from a great corner from Joe Walls with the goal beckoning. Walton again soon after was put through on goal but their keeper made a great point blank save to deny him.
Soon after this Kymani Severin cut in from the right and bent a ball which looked like it was going to find the far bottom corner but it went inches wide with the Barnard keeper routed to the spot.
Barnard Castle did however take the lead late in the first half when Olly Dixon was robbed in the middle of the pitch the ball was then played over the top up for Ben Clark to nip in just before the advancing Harry Telfer and lift the ball into the empty net.
Telfer then made a superb one handed save when it looked like a home strike was heading for the very top left hand corner to help keep the score at 1 - 0 to Barnard Castle at the break.
It was difficult for both sides to get any sort of passing game going on a very difficult heavy uneven pitch so it was a case of defending a lot of high balls and United did this well in the second half.
But they did concede a second goal midway through the half when a sloppy miss placed pass left substitute Rob Peart 1-v-1 with Telfer again and he made no mistake to double the home side's lead.
United did get back in the game when a quality cross from substitute Finn Cook was met at the front post by Alex Clark who flicked his header high into the net to half the deficit.
United then pushed everything forward and stormed the Castle defences but just could not find the equaliser their efforts against such a strong side deserved on the day.
Colin Wotherspoon Comments :
I was pleased with how this young honest group of lads went about their business today against a much older stronger group of players! We will take a lot away from todays game things we did well and other stuff that as a group we must do better.
TEAM : 1. Harry Telfer 2. Keane Mitchell 3. Joe Walls 4. Dylan Robson 5. Alex Clark 6. Riley Everett 7. Kymani Severin 8. Ben Gallagher 9. Dan Walton 10. Olly Dixon (c) 11. Harvey Lawrence
SUBS : Finn Cook (for Walls), Joe Sykes (for Mitchell), Evan Cubby (for Severin) Joe Bell (for Lawrence), Leo Fasuan (for Dixon), Matty Henderson - DNP
SCORER : Alex Clark MAN of the MATCH : Dylan Robson
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