Northwich Report

By: Jeremy Bailey
Date: 08/08/2001

A SHOWERY EVENING in Northwich saw a very young Grimsby side take on The Vics at the historic Drill Field the oldest stadium in the land.

Two pints of draught Tetley's in The Vic club bar before the game put us in good spirits, as we were joined by 4 more Town fans, that made 6, all in Town shirts, the crowd I am sure, consisted of more Town fans, but we were not to meet them.

We lined up 4-3-3 as follows;

Croudson (Capt), Ward, Morgan, Chapman, Ford, Scott, Parker, Bolder, Manseram, Cass and Jameson.

Subs: Hall, Newton, Beesley, Williamson, Kirkham and Carchedi.

The 200 or so crowd settled down for a most entertaining evening of football. We started slowly and you could hear Croudson marshalling his young wards from the back. The Vics were finding a lot of space on our left flank and causing us all sorts of problems. We then began to get hold of the ball and keep possession, Ben Chapman, who was playing in the centre of midfield was doing a good job, as was Bolder. It was our turn to put pressure on the home side, the tall and very fast young black lad Daz Manseram had two great chances to score, but the keeper made a good save for one effort and Daz did not connect with his head when in front of goal about a minute later.

We then had two more opportunities to put the ball in the net, we again failed to do so (very 1st teamish), we were playing them off the park, but could not convert anything into a goal.

On about 40 minutes it was our turn for a let off, when our hosts should have scored themselves, they had a couple of corners, but we dealt with those without any trouble and stumbled to half-time 0-0. We edged the first-half, but only just, we faded towards the end.

The second half saw the same 11 start, but you could see some tired legs straight away, Northwich now looked big and strong, compared to our youngsters, it wasn't so noticeable in the first half.

It was no surprise when Greg Blundell (what a name!) almost broke the back of the net after 50 mins, luckily for us, he was offside. 5 minutes later a defected shot bounced onto our crossbar with Croudson beaten, not long after that a sliding tackle inside the box by Ben Chapman saved the day (but not for long).

We were now a spent force, offering nothing up front and under constant pressure, a free-kick against young Ford (who had a good game), resulted in the Vics first goal, a well taken header by their huge centre half Gary Birch.

The game then went a bit quiet, until we gave away a corner and (we think) poor young Ward headed into our own net (he had a good game, apart from that!).

The game then fizzled out, we had some nice neat inter-play between some of our players but with no end result. Throughout the second-half we made numerous substitutions, no one who came on, improved our lot a great deal, but all in all, it was a good run out for our reserve cum youth side.

I am sure Paul Wilkinson, who was running the show, will have also learnt something from tonight's game, I hope so, it's called shooting practise!

Who pulled the plug at BP? Click Here to read about The Pub With No Beer!!

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