St Mary’s in the mood for another final

●● Scott Wylie and Mickey Saunders RICHARDSON CUP ROUND ONE COPPULL UNITED HAS ST MARY’S STEVE BAYES HASLINGDEN St Mary’s have been in the last three League Cup Finals, winning two of them, and this away performance against Coppull United showed that they want to appear in a fourth.

Putting the disappointment of recent league defeats behind them St Mary’s outplayed Coppull United with a brilliant all round team performance, as 2 goals in each half brought a deserved 4-0 victory.

St Mary’s started on the front foot playing some neat passing football forcing 2 early corners.

Coppull slowly got their game going but any threat was comfortably snuffed out with a solid display throughout the match from the back four.

St Mary’s continued to push forward and they were rewarded on 32 minutes when a mix up in the Coppull defence brought the first goal as the ball broke to Alex White who lashed the ball home from six yards.

St Mary’s keeper Danny Bell did well to preserve the one goal lead with a very good low down save from a Coppull forward with their only serious threat on goal.

On forty minutes Coppull were powerless to stop a brilliant St Mary’s 2nd 0 4 goal as the ball was played up the left channel to Scott Wylie he cut in field past two defenders and played the ball out wide right to Johnny Welch is first time cross found captain Mickey Saunders who volleyed the ball into the net before the keeper could move to give St Mary’s a deserved 2-0 half time lead.

Coppull came out stronger in the second half but they were rocked on 55 minutes with another well worked St Mary’s goal as Saunders beat the offside trap and played in Wylie, his cross was turned into the net by young substitute Leon Creech to fire home.

St Mary’s could have had more goals but the Coppull goalkeeper stood between St Mary’s Scott Wylie pulling of two great saves to deny the St Mary’s striker.

But St Mary’s wanted more and the fourth goal came in the ninetieth minute with more chaos in the Coppull defence as a Johnny Welch shot was blocked but he got the ball back and fired home from a narrow angle to complete a great team performance, with four well taken goals and a clean sheet to send the team into the quarter finals.

St Mary’s reserves progressed in the Stewart Rowe Cup with a 2-1 home win over Croston Sports Club Reserves, scorers were Elliot Lindo and Oliver Hall