Clark’s pride as side take derby bragging rights
HAS ST MARY’S .............2 ROSSENDALE..................5
TUESDAY night saw local rivals Haslingden St Mary’s and Rossendale FC reserves lock horns for the first time in the clubs histories in a competitive match and it was the stags that romped to a conclusive victory over their hosts.
A bumper crowd gathered for what was a full blooded affair and to be fair Haslingden started the game well with some good quality pressing all over the pitch which put the stags under some early pressure.
You could see however though that when Rossendale took possession they had that better quality and always looked more likely to do more damage than the home side.
Haslingden centre midfielder Charlie Howard was seeing quite a lot of the ball in the middle of the park and probed the Rossy defence on a few occasions but became a little bit too confident and probably score the best own goal you’re ever likely to see when under pressure in the stags half he sent a ball back to his keeper but seriously misjudged his power and chipped his own keeper to give Rossy the lead on 21 minutes.
It was slightly harsh on the hosts, but it was not long before they were back level when Forlan Jakolevs burst through and with a delicate dink over the keeper hit the post, but followed in his shot and pushed the ball home.
The match was now beginning to warm up and the crowd were getting behind both teams. Rossendale went close with a couple of crosses that weren’t met in the box, but eventually retook the lead following a whipped free kick from Tom Hartley which was met expertly by Tom Walkers head leaving the Mary’s keeper with no chance.
It stayed 2-1 till half time and coming out into the second half you felt Rossy had a couple more gears to go through whereas Mary’s were at full tilt and still coming up short.
The next goal would be important and it came on 52 minutes with some real quality from Tom Hartley. Rossendale had a free kick 25 yards out and Hartley managed to bend the ball around the wall and back into the top right hand corner leaving the Mary’s keeper helpless clutching thin air.
Lesser teams would have rolled over but Mary’s kept plugging away sometimes a little bit over zealously one would say with some really poor challenges going unpunished from the ref, but it was a free kick again that got them back in the game when they swung a ball in from the left that eluded all the players in the box and into the top corner.
With 20 minutes to go one goal in it, it was all to play for and Haslingden tails were up. They were soon snuffed out though in a clinical fashion. Craig watts picked up the ball midway in the Mary’s half and spotted Martin Trickett making a run who ruthlessly smashed the ball beyond the onrushing keeper with his left foot.
The stags now 4-2 up didn’t stop and really put their foot on the neck of the opposition as the clock ticked down substitute
Jonathan Heap reacted first to a well saved shot from Oli Williams and slammed the ball home from close range with his first touch of the match then took great pleasure in celebrating in front of the home teams dugout to really rub salt in the wound of the fallen Mary’s manager Bradley White.
After the game Rossy manager Chris Clark said: “I was extremely pleased with the lads tonight, it was a must win game and they delivered. To score five goals away from home in a tough midweek local derby well you couldn’t ask for more. It was a disciplined performance from all the lads from the starting eleven right through to the subs that came on and made impacts in the match.
“It’s been a few weeks since we played our opening fixture in this competition and we may have had a bit of ring rust to start with but for me the result was never in doubt and at times it was men against boys out there, even though the home team did try and mix it up with some poor challenges, we kept our cool and scored some really good chances.
“The biggest positive for me was that we took most of our chances and it’s always nice to be the top dogs in the local area.
“Now we move into Saturday for another must win game away at Lostock St. Gerard’s and hopefully build on that performance.”