Radcliffe Juniors Blue we the visitors to Fortress Hillock on the 10^th April. With the season now entering the final weeks the lads knew that to secure promotion then another win this week was a must. Radcliffe along with Little Lever look to be the only teams who can upset the promotion push so after the hard fought win away at Little Lever two weeks ago then a win this week would mean the under 12s are nearly there.

After the Easter break a fine footballing morning awaited. Elliott was away so hopefully the remaining members of the squad would step up to the mark and take a further step towards the teams first ever promotion. Radcliffe earlier this season gave the lads a big scare and in reality could and should have been 3-0 up before the break in the away fixture last September, however a great football display in the second half had secured the 3 points. We therefore knew that a tricky fixture awaited and so it proved.

The game kicked off and to be honest Unsworth started the poorer team. Passes kept going astray, challenges were not being made and Radcliffe looked a yard faster. Was this too many Easter eggs or were the lads just to casual? A scruffy game was proceeding and where Unsworth normally create plenty of chances nothing seemed to be happening. Everything was fairly disjointed and the team looked unsettled and so it proved. Around 15 minutes in the inevitable happened and with the Unsworth defence looking at each other Radcliffe were returning to the centre spot 1-0 up.

This seemed to help focus the mind and within minutes it was all square. Some teams need a jolt to get them going and hopefully this would prove to be the case, but even though we didn’t get a flood of goals we did manage to go 2-1 up before half time.

The game was still not flowing as John and Danny would like and changes were being made to see if we could get some real shape but to no avail. That said we stuck at it and a battle was raging all over the park, but on too many occasions we were either second to the ball or they wanted it more. We seemed to have reverted back to waiting for the ball to bounce or not winning the first ball and we will need to work on this before the end of the season, especially if we get up to the B division.

Total football it was not . It was never a classic, Radcliffe were happy dishing it out, but we stuck to it coming in at half time in the lead. The second half was much the same. As the matched moved on it looked like the next goal could decide which way things would finally end up.

As Radcliffe pushed deeper into the Unsworth half Liam decided that he would try out a bit of Kung Fu (not really) just outside the Unsworth box. The ref had no option but to award a direct free kick and the pressure was on the Unsworth defence and Ethan in net. Unsworth decided to drop a man back on the line, so the opposition dropped in as well, and the 6 yard box was getting more congested. Just as the free kick was struck Unsworth moved out and as the ball nestled in the Unsworth goal various shouts went up. Some were of Radcliffe celebrations, John and Danny appealing for offside or anything else we could think of, and some others seemed to be out of desperation from the Unsworth team. I am not sure what the correct decision was but the Ref did. He blew up and awarded Unworth a free kick for obstruction on Ethan. Result!.

The Radcliffe manager and fans understandably went a little ballistic but things were about to get worse for them as Unsworth pulled themselves together and set about getting up the other end of the pitch and putting pressure on the visitors goal.

From a throw in on the Unsworth left Luke hurled the ball to an Unsworth attacker who looked offside to some of the oppostion (but remember that you can’t be offside from a throw in). He skipped past the Radcliffe defender to slot the ball into the middle and the resulting goal looked like it was now game over. Was the Unsworth goal scorer offside? I can‘t say as I didn’t see it but I might be developing eye sight like Arsene Wenger.

The game finished 4-1 to the home team. It now looks like we need a maximum of 11 points from 5 games and therefore have a great change to wrap this up with games in hand.

This week we visit Summerseat Juniors so I will text out with details once I have them.

Well done to everyone and this week I promise to take a pen and piece of paper to write down the goal scores as I keep forgetting who scored which goal so sorry if you didn’t get a mention!