PETER MORRISON TROPHY ROUND THREE
NORTH LONDON RAIDERS B 2 FAITHFOLD A 1
Lightning struck twice at Brunel as having recently beaten them 2-1 in the JC MSFL Premier Division, North London Raiders B moved into the last 16 of the Jewish FA Cup with a memorable victory over former winners Faithfold A.
The first half was a very even first half with chances created at both ends.
Faithfold top-scorer Mike Pearson always looked a threat and it was the former Lions marksman who won the penalty from which Faithfold took the lead. Pearson's pace and strength put him through in goal and Dan Grossman's challenge got the man and not the ball leaving the referee no option but to give the penalty. Grossman was lucky to stay on the pitch as he was the last man and it did look like a clear goal-scoring opportunity.
In the absence of regular penalty taker Alex Levack, Daryl Phillips stepped up to place the ball past the despairing David Simnock who had guessed correctly.
Raiders came out of the blocks strongly in the opening stages of the second half and within 10 minutes had turned the tie on its head.
First a brilliant cross from Dan Polak fed Dave Esterkin who finished expertly passed Ben Law.
Then good hassling from Mike Hershman caused a mix-up in the Faithfold defence and top-scorer David Dinkin was on hand to tap into the empty net.
The rest of the second half was pulsating with chances for both sides.
Faithfold were presented with a glorious opportunity to level the scores when they were awarded a second penalty. This time Grossman was adjudged to have brought down Phillips. This time Phillips went to his right and the keeper's left but Simnock guessed correctly to pull off a quite outstanding penalty save and win the tie for Raiders.
Jubilant Raiders boss Rob Richman told JC Sport: "It has been a tricky couple of weeks with results and performances not being up to required standard that we set ourselves.
"Today was much, much better with everyone pulling in the right direction. We were fortunate that we didn't go down to 10 men in the first half but after we conceded we showed great desire to turn the game round.
"Overall a very pleasing result and we are delighted to still be in the cup come the new year."
Faithfold boss Zuriel Solomon told JC Sport: "I'm very disappointed with today's result. We are not playing to the standards we set early on in the season and are out of all cups before the end of the year.
"We were good first half and went 1-0 up with a penalty but the Raiders player only received a yellow card despite bringing our player down six yards out. He was the last defender so you work it out. That's been our luck in the last month but we now don't have a game until the new year which will give us time to recuperate get our injured players fit, which included our skipper today Alex Levack who was sidelined.
"Well done to Raiders, who had a good spell in the game and scored two goals in five minutes after bad individual errors."