BLYTH SPIRIT
Barman Dale’s double feeds dreams of upset, before City’s rapid riposte sends non-Leaguers back to their day jobs
BARMAN Robbie Dale served up a first-half double for non-League Blyth Spartans but their FA Cup finally ran dry as Birmingham’s Wesley Thomas called time on their remarkable run.
The 30-year-old Spartans skipper will be opening up The Blacksmiths Arms in Newcastle this morning as he returns to the day job he chose over a career as a professional footballer.
On this evidence, Dale would be worthy of a place in the Championship. There were certainly no halfmeasures in a pulsating opening half in which Blyth — of the seventh-tier Northern Premier League and playing their seventh match in this season’s competition — took a deserved two-goal lead thanks to the devastating Dale at a sold-out Croft Park.
The hosts emerged for the second half under instruction to ‘keep it tight for 15 minutes’. By the hour mark, however, they were trailing, such was the madness of this enthralling tie played on a pitch which even cattle might steer clear of. It was, despite the narrow defeat for the underdogs, a magical afternoon.
Blyth boss Tom Wade was certainly proud of his side’s efforts. ‘If you’d said before the game we’d get beaten 3-2 we might have taken that,’ he said. ‘I think we deserved to win but they had 10 minutes of total dominance which killed it.
‘I’m very proud of what they have done. This team has got a lot to give and the future is very bright.’
Dale, too, refused to bemoan the turnaround. ‘You get to 2-0 at halftime and you think the shock is on,’ he said. ‘The word at half-time was, “Keep it tight for 10 or 15 minutes”, but that didn’t work out did it?
‘It was uphill after that but in the last 20 minutes we came again. I had a half-chance which went just wide and Danny (Parker) had a header which went into the side-netting. We might have nicked a replay.’
Blyth took the lead on 35 minutes when Jarrett Rivers, scorer of the stoppage-time winner at Hartlepool in the second round, drove into the area. He outwitted two defenders — and himself — with a clumsy stepover attempt but played it back for winger Dale to smash home.
It was soon two. Dale, receiving a short free-kick from Stephen Turnbull, drifted languidly into the area. But he hides a lethal streak beneath his lethargy and he dropped a shoulder before firing into the corner.
Dale, reflecting on his brace, said: ‘For the first one Jarrett did brilliantly to battle his way out of the corner and pull it back.
‘Then, for the second one, we’ve tried that a couple of times when
Stephen doesn’t fancy crossing it and we work it short. I just had a run and the lad let me get inside. The shot was on and I took it.
‘It was incredible, the ground was bouncing and I was thinking, “I could get three here”. It wasn’t to be and they had a brilliant 10 minutes, but we can be proud of what we have done as a team. It’s been a brilliant run and we’ve been close to going out a few times.
‘It’s back to reality now, Frickley away on Tuesday night. First I’m opening up the pub in the morning but I’ll be out with my mates for a few beers tonight.’
The turning point came in firsthalf injury time when Blyth’s livewire forward Daniel Maguire took aim for the top corner only for Colin Doyle to extend an arm and flip the ball over. Without that stop Birmingham’s confidence might have gone for good.
As it was, they emerged for the second half determined to make amends — and scored three goals in six minutes.
First Lee Novak smashed the ball into the bottom corner from the edge of the area, and three minutes later Thomas out-muscled centreback Ryan Hutchinson and hammered beyond Peter Jeffries.
Another three minutes and Thomas capped the turnaround with a header from six yards after Mark Duffy swept it over from the left.
Birmingham boss Gary Rowett, who made 10 changes for the game, said: ‘We learnt a bit more than we wanted to learn about some of the players at half-time. I’m very pleased with the response, we showed a lot of character.
‘It was a brilliant afternoon. I might not stay up and watch it on Match of the Day — I don’t think I can put myself through it again! I played in the Leicester side that lost to Wycombe, and a guy, Roy Essandoh, signed from Teletext, scored the winner. And that was a League Two side knocking a Premier League side out.
‘So we have seen how it works and we wouldn’t have complained if we had got beat, but I am very, very pleased we are in the next round.’
As for Dale, they’ll still be toasting Blyth’s hero for years to come.