AFC Liverpool v Prestwich Heys, 12th January 2019

 It was a first half in which we were largely second best, as fifth placed AFC Liverpool took on third placed Prestwich Heys, with the sides only separated by three points. Although, Heys did have a far superior goal difference going into this match.

Prestwich were very comfortable on the ball throughout the first half. That said, whenever Dave the Rattler or Chris Dace would make a comment to that effect, they would seemingly give the ball away.

At one point, Goalkeeper Lee Carr struggled to retrieve what seemed a routine take. He got away with it, and to be fair to Lee, the wind was probably a factor.  For all Prestwich's good play, their main efforts were restricted to long-range efforts.

We took the lead not only against the run of play, but also courtesy of good fortune. I think it was a through ball from Jay Howell which deflected off the referee and into the path of Callum Schorah. He ran at the defence, then Jay McGrane took over and his shot got parried by the keeper. The rebound fell to Anthony Lyons who slotted it home.

Almost immediately afterwards, Prestwich did have the ball in the net with a header after a cross delivered from their right by their impressive number 7. That effort was ruled offside, and thankfully we remained in the lead at the interval.

It was just after the hour mark when a looping header from Callum Schorah doubled our advantage. This was following a Jay Howell cross from the right. If it had not been a goal, it would have almost certainly been a penalty, as Callum was being pushed by a defender.

About ten minutes later, Callum almost had a second. He got in between their Keeper and a Defender, but toe poked it wide.

For much of the second half we had to dig in though, as we had the previous Saturday against Nelson. We withstood the pressure against a very good Prestwich side to hold onto the 2-0 scoreline.

I did wonder with four wins on the trot, if we could at the very least continue the run and finish the season quite close to those teams right at the top like Longridge and Avro. On speaking with Greg our Vice-Chairman, I realised that we would probably need to secure a top five finish to qualify for the next season's FA Cup.

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