Hard working forward meets strong defender in the first half of the match.
12 January 2013
EBAC Northern League Division 1
Goalscorers: Aycliffe: Young, Earl.
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A depleted RCA squad took on a Newton Aycliffe side who had recorded six wins in their last 9 games, a far cry from the catostophic opening to the season.
Defenders, Preston and Buzzeo were unavailable and were replaced by Henderson and Beasley.
The first half was unbelievably innocuous with little in the way of attacking flair from either team and both defences looking solid. the only chance of the first half fell to Aycliffe when a misplaced pass was intercepted by Lambert and he sent an inch perfect pass to Reay but Graham was quickly off his line to make a terrific save.
The half time whistle came as a relief to most spectators who had witnessed a rather dull a uneventful match thus far.
The second half opened with a bang as RCA pushed forward in an effort to liven the match up, Close played in Shaw and as the winger went round Pocklington he was clearly caught before the Keeper made contact with the ball and a penalty was awarded.
Owens stepped up and his weak effort was easily saved low down to his right.
Guerin-Lokonga linked up with Cutts who burst into the box, Cleverly beat the defender and then tried to curl a shot into the far corner of the net, unfortunately the ball struck the post and rebounded to safety.
Aycliffe took heart from these misses and launched themselves onto the offensive, Reay was causing all sorts of problems down the right and when RCA failed to clear a cross into the area the ball fell to Owen who volleyed the ball narrowly wide of the upright.
Aycliffe made a double substitution and this looked to change the course of the game as within minutes they took the lead, RCA failed to deal with a cross into the box and it fell to the influential Young who blasted the ball home from the edge of the box.
RCA were totally rocked by this goal and never looked likely to recover, Aycliffe's defence was well in command of the RCA attackers and Pocklington in goal was in no mood to concede today.
In the 78 minute RCA's fate was complete when Hughes raced past the RCA token effort at defending before cutting the ball back into the path of Earl who clinically fired from 12 yards out. Earl almost added to his and Aycliffe's tally in the dying minutes when he was clean through but his shot was well saved by Graham.
A below par performance from the whole team, the penalty miss probably summed up the whole afternoon.
We will need to do a lot better in the next two games if we want to reach the next round of the Durham Challange Cup and the management will be asking for a hugely improved performance against Darlington 1883 next Saturday.