Cheltenham get the better of their rivals in shoot-out
FOREST GREEN ROVERS ........ 1 CHELTENHAM TOWN .............. 1
(Cheltenham won 4-3 on penalties)
LUKE Southwood’s shoot-out penalty save helped ensure Cheltenham Town progressed in the Papa John’s Trophy Round of 16 after beating Gloucestershire rivals Forest Green Rovers 4-3 on penalties on Tuesday night.
Perfect penalties from Liam Sercombe, Elliot Bonds and Charlie Brown put pressure on Forest Green, and when Southwood diving to his left denied Josh March, it was left for Ryan Broom to score the winning spot kick to the delight of the 665 Robins fans in the 1,426-strong crowd at the New Lawn.
The match had ended 1-1 in regulation time after Broom’s headed effort for Town in the 69th minute cancelled out March’s first-half goal to send the tie to a penalty shoot-out.
Town’s assistant head coach Russell Milton spoke to the media afterwards and asked if it was a fully deserved win, replied: “I’d say so, yes. It would have been nice to have got there in the 90 minutes, but the next best thing is to win it on penalties. It got to be a bit of a lottery in the end, but we were really good. After the first 20 minutes or so, we grew into the game and were full value for the victory.”
Asked how encouraging was it to put in a performance like that after making several changes to the side, and playing without Alfie May, Milton said: “Yes, we wanted to try and keep the momentum rolling on. Since Alvechurch, the response has been really good. We had two good performances in the league before that, so we are unbeaten in the league, along with tonight. Alfie has obviously been out for a while, came back and suffered a back spasm on Saturday. He was close to starting the game and was prominent in our thoughts, but we decided to keep him for Charlton in 10 days’ time.
“It was pleasing and a good performance. I liked us with the ball tonight, the best we’ve been all season probably. We looked really comfortable, trusted each other, playing and moving, looking after it and on many occasions it was just the final ball that was missing.
Reflecting on the game, Forest Green head coach Ian Burchnall said: “A draw was probably the right result after 90 minutes. I would say that we were the much better side in the first half and Cheltenham were the better side in the second. We ended up too deep, we didn’t get hold of the game, we knew we’d have to weather a bit because they were 1-0 down and took more risks, I thought we played a very good first half but second half we gave them too much territory, and probably 1-1 was the right result. The penalties are not quite our night when the two centre forwards are the two that missed.”
He added: “We’ve got to learn to manage being ahead better, there are quite a few games we’ve been ahead, we have to learn that we will have to weather more high risk from the opposition ... So we’ve got to be a bit smarter when we get 1-0 up.”
Forest Green: Thomas, Bernard, Casey, Bunker, Boyes, Hendry (Cargill 75), McGeouch (O’Keeffe 59), Robertson (Jones 87), Perat-Harris, Matt (Wickham 75), March. Subs not used: McGee, Bell, McKenzie.
Cheltenham Town: Southwood, Freestone, Raglan (Norton 67), Taylor, Hutchinson (Williams 67), Sercombe, Bonds, Jackson, Broom, Nlundulu, Brown. Subs not used: MacDonald, Long, Bradbury, Adshead, Lloyd,
Attendance: 1,426 (665 away)