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Guisborough Town 3 Sunderland RCA 2

Submitted by Rob Jones on Thursday, 20 August 2015
Wednesday, 19 August 2015
The Emirates FA Cup

Goalscorers: SRCA: Hope, Drysdale, Guisborough: Earl, Round, Snaith.

SRCA continued with injury problems before this FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round replay with Harkess pulling up in the warm up, replaced by Morris, Hatch failed a fitness test to start and went on the bench, however Larkin returned and the manager gave a Cliff Byrne his debut. Charlton and Brown were unavailable from Saturday's team.

Guisborough were very much on top early on, the pace of their front three creating a few good chances, luckily only one taken, Earl pouncing on the rebound after Morris could only parry a shot.

New boy Byrne and defensive partner Drysdale were fighting hard against the fast running Guisborough forwards, and we rode our luck a little.

RCA gradually got more into game and Callen and Hughes found some space as the half progressed, but little in the way of real opportunities. Larkin and Hope playing wide were well marshalled.

RCA came out very brightly for the second half and dominated for a long period, with Callum Hope equalising after 51 minutes with a wicked free kick from wide which fooled the keeper and crept in to far corner.

The visitors stayed on top and Adam Drysdale made it 2-1 after 64 minutes with an excellent header from a corner.

RCA then sat back a little and were punished when a hopeful shot struck the post and fell right into the path of Round who scored.

The game, like Saturday's, was now end to end with chances galore and Callen was very unlucky when a great run in the 75th minute saw his shot come back into play from the inside of the post and be cleared away.

Just as Extra time looked certain Guisborough scored from a corner, Snaith finishing to give Guisborough a win in an excellent game in which having weathered a storm in the first half RCA can feel unlucky to go out on their second half performance, which was first class.

After the game a thoughtful Colin Wilson reported "After a slow start from RCA, the game could have been long gone in the first half hour, but we fought our way into the game well, and against a very good side looked the better team for much of the second half. The fighting spirit was there for all to see, although we need to tighten our defensive approach, across the whole team, as too often players were allowed to run a long way deep into our defence without too much in the way of a challenge. We took our chances well, built very good spells of pressure and maintained them, and considering that we were again short of several players, many aspects of the performance were very pleasing. Once again the result was disappointing and continues our record of not having much luck in the FA Cup."