IT’S MEN AGAINST BOYS
Non-Leaguers Chorley fully deserve historic win over decimated Derby
THEY had wanted to see Wayne Rooney walking into the ground past the handsome wrought-iron gates off Duke Street that bear the name of Victory Park in big capital letters. The Chorley players had wanted to bump fists with the acting Derby manager, England’s record goalscorer, and soak up the size of the occasion. The FA Cup third round is made for moments like that.
An outbreak of Covid-19 among the Derby first-team squad had put paid to those imaginings of what the magic of the Cup might bring. Neither Rooney nor any of the senior players from his struggling Championship side even travelled to Lancashire and in their place a youth team was thrown into the fray. Three of the Chorley team sported full beards. Some of the Derby players looked as if they had not started shaving. It was men against boys.
And so Chorley made the dream happen in a different way. Rooney may not have been here but this turned into the day of the Chorley players’ lives anyway. Up against a team of players anointed stars of the future, Chorley’s journeymen pros rose up and outfought and outplayed them, earning a deserved 2-0 victory that sent them into the fourth round for the first time in their history. This was the first time they had even been in the third round.
This was not an occasion like Aston Villa’s tie with Liverpool on Friday night when no one was in any doubt who was the underdog. Villa’ s kids captured the imagination in that tie because they epitomised pluck against might. Louie Barry’s lovely goal and his guileless post- match interview epitomised the romance of the competition, even in the age of Covid-19.
But this was different. No one quite knew who to root for. Who was David and who was Goliath? Were the underdogs the callow kids from Derby’s U23 and U18 teams, up against men who towered over them? Or were the underdogs the street wise players from the
National League North side, which sits 83 places below w Derby in England’s football ball pyramid?
Maybe when Der- by’s kids looked at Chorley’s players before the match, they saw broken dreams. Maybe when they looked around Victory Park with its grass banks speckled by snow and rubble and its ramshackle stands, they saw football’s scrapheap. Maybe they saw a place that inhabits their nightmares, a place a long way from the ideas they harbour of making it in this game. And maybe by the end of it, they realised how fine the margins can be between making it to the top and falling j ust short. Maybe they had an improved understanding of just how good and how committed you have to be to graduate to the elite. Because these Chorley players, who some will have designated cast-offs, played like superstars for the afternoon.
The only ‘name’ in the Derby team led by development manager Pat Lyons was Bobby Duncan, the former Liverpool and England youth team star who left the Reds in rancorous circumstances to play for Fiorentina. Turning out for a scratch Derby side at Victory Park may not quite have been what he was imagining when he headed for Italy but it was seen as a chance to put him back in the spotlight. Still working his way back to fitness, he barely got a kick.
Chorley may sit 10th in the sixth tier of English football but they were the better team throughout. They established their physical superiority early but this win was about more than just muscularity. They were the more accomplished team, too. They have already beaten Wigan and Peterborough in the competition this season and they did the non-League game proud again here.
This was a victory for a club and a community, a victory for the spirit that exists at outposts like this. The groundsman stayed up all night to make sure that the heated tent that covered the pitch and was crucial to the game going ahead in freezing conditions did not malfunction. He was interviewed on the radio yesterday morning and confessed his eyelids were starting to droop. But he had done his job.
Derby thought they had won a penalty in the sixth minute when a threaded through ball from Isaac Hutchinson released Cameron Cresswell and he advanced on Matt Urwin in the Chorley goal. Cresswell tried to take the ball around Urwin and when he fell under his challenge, referee Kevin Friend appeared to point to the spot. Confusion reigned briefly until it became evident Friend had penalised Cresswell for a dive. Chorley had escaped.
They seized quickly on their reprieve. Four minutes later, a corner was swung in from the Chorley right, Derby’s youngsters struggled to cope with the physicality of the Chorley players and after the ball had been nodded from head to
head in the box, it was headed over the line by Connor Hall.
That was the theme of the first half. Derby looked overwhelmed by Chorley’s experience and gamecraft. Their defence found it particularly hard to cope with the aerial threat of Harry Cardwell in the Chorley attack, who bullied them and dragged them out of shape. Time after time, crosses swung into the Derby area spread panic among their defenders.
Chorley nearly went further ahead two minutes before half-time when Will Tomlinson seized on a loose ball on the edge of the Derby box. It sat up nicely for him and he lobbed it instinctively towards goal. It sailed over the head of Derby goalkeeper Matt Yates but just as Tomlinson was beginning to celebrate, it cannoned off the face of the bar and away to safety.
Derby started the second half bett er but Chorley s hould have extended their lead after an hour when Arlen Birch curled in an inviting cross from the right and Mike Calveley rose to meet it unmarked. He directed his header downwards but just wide of Yates’ right-hand post. Calveley held his head in his hands. He knew he should have scored.
The non-Leaguers got the second goal they deserved six minutes from time when Calveley made amends for his earlier miss. Elliot Newby swung a cross into the box which the Derby defence could not intercept and Calveley stabbed it home to seal the momentous kind of win that the name of Victory Park conjures in the mind.