Burscough kick off season with Cup win

BURSCOUGH gave their season an early boost, travelling over to West Yorkshire on Sunday to play in the FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round for the first time in around 20 years.

And they returned from the Welfare ground with what in the end was a fairly comfortable victory.

It is a rather strange situation when your first competitive game of the season is in the FA Cup and even more so when it is played on a Sunday, but it didn’t bother Burscough and it took them only five minutes to grab the lead.

A long throw-in from the right brought chaos to the Emley backline and Peter Henerty punished the home defence in the best way possible.

Soon afterwards Burscough saw a header hit the home crossbar and Henerty fired a shot over the top as the Linnets sought to press home their advantage.

In the 18th minute the Burscough pressure got its reward.

Right-back Josh Dunroe, who made a good impression all afternoon pushed a free kick through the Emley defence, Derek Szanto latched onto it and the Burscough number five coolly slotted home to make it 2-0.

Despite further Burscough offensive play it was Emley who almost pulled a goal back, but Thabiso Magida wasted what was arguably the best chance of the afternoon at the far post.

Matters evened up towards the interval but there was no doubting Burscough had been the better team as the teams went back to the dressing room.

For the second-half, Emley made changes but it was Burscough who soon went close, Liam Diggle being denied.

With the luxury of a two goal lead, Burscough were now able to sit back and play counterattack football and they held Emley well, the nearest worry was an Aaron Joseph header that went wide.

The game was finally up for Emley when they had left sided defender Mike Starkey sent off for a second yellow card. Then six minutes from time the end for Emley was rubber-stamped when home goalkeeper Paul Day couldn’t hold onto a Henerty shot and Jake Connelly forced home the rebound to produce a final score of 3-0 to Burscough.

Emley had a couple of late flurries but it was Burscough’s day and they had beaten Emley again in cup competition to follow up the famous FA Trophy success of 2003.

They will have another cup repeat from the past in the next round when they travel to Radcliffe Borough on Saturday, August 19, but will be hoping for a better result than that epic from history books brought.