Men's 2s 2 - 5 Bowdon

EH Cup 2nd Round

After an overnight stay and a difficult journey from our hotel in Macclesfield to the pitch, Duncan Howarth was left cursing the AA Routeplanner. This left us with a less than ideal preparation for what was always going to be a hard game at Bowdon. What transpired was a highly entertaining and engaging game played by two evenly matched sides, the final margin of victory flattering our hosts. But again we were guilty of orchestrating our own downfall by our profligacy in front of goal. We won over 10 short corners in the game and failed to take any of them.

Despite our poor preparation we started well, stroking the ball around at pace and creating a number of chances, one of which was taken. Duncan Howarth turned superbly on the top of the ‘D’ and fired low into the corner, the culmination of some wonderful attacking play. With Dwain Quan-Chan controlling the game at centre midfield, willing runs from the midfield of Dillet Gilkes and Tom Gogarty, and the irrepressible Duncan Scott who relentlessly foraged up and down the left like a hamster on it’s wheel,  and some intelligent leads from the from the front trio of Andrew Medcalf, Duncan Howarth and John Fitzpatrick we were constantly causing problems for the home defence. A failure to capitalise when we were on top gave the home side hope and by half time Bowdon led 2-1.

A host of short corners at the start of the second half were misused and Bowdon rubbed our noses in it by firing the 1^st corner of the game past Nathan Bullens in goal to make it 3-1. This left us chasing the game but we were unlucky to be denied a second as a John Fitzpatrick strike from a corner was contentiously disallowed on height grounds. The space left behind as we through men into attack, left our defence of Bullens, Seye Akande, Rafe Budden and Henry Howe and exposed and presented opportunities for the Bowdon forwards which were duly dispatched. We deservedly found another goal when Medcalf found space in the front of goal and slotted the ball past the keeper.

Team: Bullens, Gogarty, Akande, Budden, Howe, Gilkes, Quan-Chan, Scott, Medcalf, Fitzpatrick, Howarth

Scorers: Howarth, Medcalf