AFC Liverpool v Cheadle Town, 18th August 2013


The least said about the first half the better.  In a half in which we showed absolutely nothing going forward, Cheadle should have been three or four goals to the good.  The only positive I could see was a couple of instances in which an AFC defender would put their body on the line to thwart a Cheadle chance.

I did at one point send a tweet about the state of affairs.  Over in Barcelona, Steve Fraser tweeted back that it was not exactly what he wished to hear, considering this team had also dumped us out of a cup competition the previous season.  He suggested that myself and the other rattlers should rattle louder!  Unfortunately, my twitter skills were in their infancy at this point in time, and I was not aware of Steve's reply until after the match.
Luckily this match did prove to be a game of two halves.  Although Cheadle came out and appeared to continue where they left off by creating an early second half chance, the second half largely belonged to AFC Liverpool.  It was Paul Brown who scored what proved to be the only goal of the game, by being in the right place at the right time to slot home from about six yards, following a good ball across the area by John Lawless.
Had the woodwork not come to Cheadle's rescue on three occasions, we would have gone on to win more emphatically.  At one point, John Lawless appeared to have found the gap perfectly from about six yards out to find the corner of the net.  Unfortunately, the effort came back off the post and rolled away.  Alan Harrison and I had been in broad agreement later that the introduction of Danny Donut from the bench added something which had been missing earlier.  It was Danny who finished a fine run with a curling shot on his weaker right foot, which came back off the woodwork.
Cheadle did come back with a mini spell, during which they forced Steve Longrigg to make a couple of saves.  We responded by going up the other end of the field, and once again hit their woodwork.  After that we managed to see the game out to earn a trip to Ramsbottom in the next round.
One of the side shows of the early weeks of the season at our level is how drawn FA Cup Matches affect scheduled midweek league fixtures.  One team earning an FA Cup replay, does in some cases lead to another side not playing in the subsequent midweek.  As I left Valerie Park, I was trying to get confirmation that Wigan Robin Park (who we were due to play on Tuesday) had seen off AFC Emley 2-1.  But unfortunately my twitter was taking it's time to load up.  When it did load up, it appeared that Emley had equalised!
Oh bugger, it looked like we would be having a free midweek!  But wait for it- Emley then got a last gasp winner which proved to be very significant in the history of AFC Liverpool.  Some people may ask why?  Not only did we play Wigan Robin Park a little over 48 hours later at the Robin Park Arena, we also went on to win 8-0! At the time it was a club record.


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