Priory Celtic Tigers 1 Hucknall Sports U9's Sunday 5

Sunday 25th September 2005

The U9's stretched their unbeaten start to the season to three from three, with a fine 5-1 victory over Priory Celtic Tigers.

Sports had to adopt a more intricate passing game than normal, in order to succeed on the narrow pitch. But for a midfield trio of Kieran Sheppard, Jack Henry Williams and Conner Gilbey this was never going to be a problem. Josh Pickering sent a long range effort just the wrong side of the post. Jack Henry went even closer to scoring, when his right footed volley shaved the top of the crossbar, after a clever throw-in by Thomas Howarth had put him through on goal. Next to be denied by the woodwork was Kieran Sheppard when his shot hit the foot of the post and rebounded straight back into open play. Celtic seemed to sense that maybe this was to be their day and indeed it was only the quick reactions of Carter Newton in the Sports goal that prevented them from taking the lead on at least two occasions.  With a first half corner count of 8 to 1 in their favour surely Sports would take the lead before half time and thanks to Jack Henry they did just that. His re-direction of the ball from six yards out was enough to wrong foot the keeper and give the visitors from Hucknall the lead they deserved.

 

With end to end action at the start of the second half the game still lay in the balance. Substitute Emilio Monaci almost scored with his first kick, but the Celtic keeper managed to pull off a good save. Carter then stopped a certain goal at the other end with another display of first class goal keeping. It was super striker Josh Pickering who finally gave Sports some breathing space in an absorbing game. He followed up a shot from Jack Henry to score his first. He then pounced on a long pass from Carter to tuck away his second, but the best was still to come. Asa Shelton emerged from a tackle on the edge of his area with the ball, as usual, before dancing past three of the opposition and laying on Josh for his hat-trick goal. Still not content though he did what all good strikers do, and followed up another foiled attempt from the outstanding Jack Henry to score his fourth and give Sports an amazing five goal advantage. Just as with the previous week though, Sports did manage to concede a late consolation goal when Carter was finally caught out.

Man of the match was awarded to the player at the hub of everything in a terrific team performance, Kieran Sheppard.