Extra time blues in the vase
Another Tuesday and another cup replay at the Unwin. This time Ely City took on Gorleston, who play in the division below of the Eastern Counties League in a replay of the vase qualifying round after drawing 1-1 away on Saturday.
We all expected not to be getting an early night and that was the one front we were not disappointed on.
Ely rested several players, but still had out what looked like a fairly competitive side. However, the Robins really lacked fire power up front despite starting with old favourite Andy Pettit and Nick Impey, who always played as a striker before, but has looked a lot livelier since his move to midfield in pre-season.
It was Gorleston who should have taken the lead in another game that lacked goal mouth action on 30 minutes when some brave keeping from Lee Pacey and a bit of luck kept them out. Gorleston repeated the move one minute later, but the result was the same. On several occassions during the game Ely's ill advised offside trap and a fast Gorleston midfield could have undone the defence. However, thanks to poor finishing, luck and Pacey being on form the two incidents around the half hour mark were pretty indicative of Gorleston's night.
Ely on the other hand seemed to rely on hoofing the ball up field as fast as they could and hoping for a defender to give a throw in away so that Ben Lawrence could launch a throw in into the box. It was one of these moves that led to a 'goal' on 35 minutes. Bruiser Brown looked to have headed the ball clean in. The referee gave a goal, but the linesman saw an Ely player handlle the ball into the net. I'm not sure if anyone else did, although the ref later claimed he'd seen it and somebody said that they caught it on video (which I haven't seen, but if you happen to stumble on this post I would like to see it).
Anyway, to cut a long story short the second half was pretty much the same as the first with Gorleston doing everything but finding the back of the net and Ely lacking any imagination apart from the hit and hope or throw and hope tactics of the first half. The major incident was in the 84th minute when Chadwick who had been on for all of 3 minutes kicked out at one of the defenders while he was on the floor and got sent off. Again the referee missed the incident and consulted the linesman who also appeared to have missed the incident, but had heard the Ely fans saying that Chadders had been lucky he hadn't seen it.
The game finally drifted into extra time and in the second half of stoppage time Gorlesto finally got the ball into the back of the net on what was really a bad night for Gorleston strikers, a bad night for Ely City and a bad night for the officials. Here's hoping for a bit more entertainment whenn the FA Cup returns to town on Saturday!
We all expected not to be getting an early night and that was the one front we were not disappointed on.
Ely rested several players, but still had out what looked like a fairly competitive side. However, the Robins really lacked fire power up front despite starting with old favourite Andy Pettit and Nick Impey, who always played as a striker before, but has looked a lot livelier since his move to midfield in pre-season.
It was Gorleston who should have taken the lead in another game that lacked goal mouth action on 30 minutes when some brave keeping from Lee Pacey and a bit of luck kept them out. Gorleston repeated the move one minute later, but the result was the same. On several occassions during the game Ely's ill advised offside trap and a fast Gorleston midfield could have undone the defence. However, thanks to poor finishing, luck and Pacey being on form the two incidents around the half hour mark were pretty indicative of Gorleston's night.
Ely on the other hand seemed to rely on hoofing the ball up field as fast as they could and hoping for a defender to give a throw in away so that Ben Lawrence could launch a throw in into the box. It was one of these moves that led to a 'goal' on 35 minutes. Bruiser Brown looked to have headed the ball clean in. The referee gave a goal, but the linesman saw an Ely player handlle the ball into the net. I'm not sure if anyone else did, although the ref later claimed he'd seen it and somebody said that they caught it on video (which I haven't seen, but if you happen to stumble on this post I would like to see it).
Anyway, to cut a long story short the second half was pretty much the same as the first with Gorleston doing everything but finding the back of the net and Ely lacking any imagination apart from the hit and hope or throw and hope tactics of the first half. The major incident was in the 84th minute when Chadwick who had been on for all of 3 minutes kicked out at one of the defenders while he was on the floor and got sent off. Again the referee missed the incident and consulted the linesman who also appeared to have missed the incident, but had heard the Ely fans saying that Chadders had been lucky he hadn't seen it.
The game finally drifted into extra time and in the second half of stoppage time Gorlesto finally got the ball into the back of the net on what was really a bad night for Gorleston strikers, a bad night for Ely City and a bad night for the officials. Here's hoping for a bit more entertainment whenn the FA Cup returns to town on Saturday!
Comments
All the best,
Neil