Lacklustre Lions win five-goal thriller against FC Team

Lions welcomed back a lively looking Elliott Stern and Sharp. Regulars Will Beresford, Alex Taylor, Nick Smith, Cam Most and Max Hassell made up the back-line, which once again sat in front of makeshift goalkeeper James Gershfield.

Recent bad weather had taken its toll, with a rock hard pitch making it difficult for either side to play a quick passing game. Lions had plenty of possession but struggled to find any real intensity once they moved into the opposition’s half.

Harry Marlow had Lions best chance of the first half, after good wide play from Gold, whose low cross found the feet of the youngster, but he couldn’t find the target from a few yards out from goal.

Adam Arnold saw his well-executed 25-yard free-kick saved by the Team keeper, but apart from those chances the first half didn’t live up to much.

Although they had dominated possession, Lions were playing nowhere near the standard that they had set themselves in recent weeks and early into the second half allowed FC Team a corner against the run of play. This led to Team having their first goal attempt of the day with Adam Rones finding the the Lions net after a neat corner move.

Lions really needed to up it a few gears if they were to salvage this cup tie and eventually they did. Sharp was introduced after 55 minutes and quickly found himself firing home the ball on the half volley after the Team keeper had made a good save from a Gold effort.

1-1 soon became 2-1 Lions after a Sharp corner found the head of Smith who guided the ball into the bottom corner for his first goal of the season.

Lions still weren’t playing as well as coach Ryan Springer would have liked but they were in the lead and looked more threatening in the final third than they had in the first half.

In the final 10 minutes Adam Arnold found himself free on the right-hand side of the Team penalty box and he played an inviting pass into the path of Stern, whose well struck shot was parried by the Team keeper, but only to the feet of Gold who had a simple chance which he converted to make 3-1.

As the game drew to a close, Team threw most of their players into offensive positions and just before the final whistle blew, their strong front man, Richard Salmon, skipped through the Lions defence with ease, unchallenged by numerous players and finished his effort into the bottom corner of the Lions goal for 3-2.

A Lions spokesman told JC Sport: "Although this certainly wasn’t our greatest footballing display this season, a win is a win and they find ourselves in the last 16 of the Peter Morrison.

“Going forward, the management will need to get better performances from their players all across the board, similarly to the last few weeks games if they are to mount a serious challenge for silverware this season."

Proud FC Team boss Mitch Young told JC Sport: "I thought we were brilliant today. For 70 minutes our game-plan was working perfectly and it was looking like Lions were not going to score.

“However, we let ourselves down in defending a set-piece to put Lions 2-1 up which was a shame.

“However, we continued to defend well and hit lions on the counter. In truth the game should have been a draw and gone into extra time but the referee somehow missed a clear offside which resulted in winning the goal for Lions.

“I know referees have a very difficult job but this was a long ball played through to their striker from our corner and everyone on the pitch and watching could see it was offside.

It was an easy decision. Anyway my boys stuck to the game plan brilliantly.”

LIONS: James Gershsfield, Cameron Most, Will Beresford, Richard Gold, Alex Taylor, Nick Smith, Harry Marlow, Ben Lampert, Adam Arnold, James Gold, Elliott Stern. Subs: Brad Sharp, Alex Rose, Max Hassell