Well I thought in all honesty we had put in a good performance a few weeks ago against Railway but Sunday's effort surpassed even that.
We had to make changes even before we kicked a ball no keeper again and Gav's absence meant we were relying on Dan Brown and Jason to drop into C/B.
I moved Joe into Midfield and Stevie to the bench with Stace playing along side Joe.
Our back four were under pressure almost immediately but we dealt with everything that was thrown at us and for the first 10 minutes or so we couldnt get the ball out of our own half, Dan pulled off a good save at his near post after about 8 minutes and my initial thoughts were we are in for a tuff ride here.
Well my initial thoughts were correct after 90 mins but I didnt expect us to be 4-0 up after 25 mins.
Ash and Ross worked excellently together holding the ball up and running at their back four they did gift us two of the goals but we still had work to do and Ash finnished brilliantly on both occasions to see us safely into 2-0 lead, Ross won a penalty which he converted with supreme confidence and Wes headed us into a 4-0 lead about 7 mins before the break.
They huffed and puffed and got a goal back and we went into the break a little shell shocked I feel we stopped playing our game and let them dictate to us how we were going to play, and at the advantage of the slope we had in the first half as predicted was the same for them in the Second.
We were under constant pressure from the start of the second half and they scored early on to make it alittle uncomfortable for us to say the least.
We moved Ross and Joe into Central defence and pushed Jason into Midfield just to give us a little more stability and switched Stevie for Tom, This seemed to stem the tide a bit until they scored another to bring the score line to 4-3.
We had to get back to basics and strat doing what we had been doing in the first 25mins of the first half and that was to hold the ball and turn their back four around and that is exactly what we did.
Ash was ploughing a lone furrel up front and Stace won the ball in the middle of the park and fired it out wide to Ash who sprinted the length of the pitch and under extreme pressure from the defender he managed to square the ball to Stace who buried it from 6 yards out to take us to 5-3.
They nicked a consolation at the end through some suspect handling by Dan but in fairness to Dan he had pulled off one or two great saves before that so deserves great credit for stepping into the goalkeeping position.
collectively as a team i thought we were excellent certainly going forward we threatened constantly and seeing how we had to swap players about it was a great credit to you all on how you adapted and fought for each other to ensure victory.
We now go into the next round with a real chance of making a cup final appearance, However we have to be wise to the fact that we need to continue to fight and scrap to get results no game will be easy but on the other hand we should fear no one either Priors Utd t home on Sunday will be another big game I expect them to be strong and organised We need to be the same.
Well done again boys and lets keep the momentum going.
