Saturday 3^rd October was giant-killing day at Hillock, with four games from the older boys all going Unsworth’s way.

Prior to Unsworth Dragons demolishing of Whitworth Juniors in the NBJFL Main Cup, the U16s, U14A and U12s teams secured victories.

With the memories of last season’s cup slaughter by Whitworth (11-1 loss) still hurting, we kicked off against the recently demoted team who won the toss and elected to switch ends, so they were playing with the very, very strong wind. A distinct advantage!

In under a minute, the first move of the game resulted in a fantastic goal for Jake, who’s cutting run down the right wing sliced through the Whitworth defence and the shell-shocked team from Rossendale were already a goal down.

Whitworth managed to level the game to one a piece, before Unsworth again took the lead.... 2-1
Again, Whitworth managed to come back and level the game again to 2-2.

The Dragons, however, were not disheartened to lose their lead for a second time and kept up their excellent one-touch football to end the half 5 minutes early than scheduled, with the score-line still at 2-2.

With the referee promising to add on the lost 5 minutes in the second half, we knew that this could be the longest half of football Unsworth Dragons would play all season. After the Dragons scored again, going 3-2 up and with 25 minutes still to play, the Unsworth supporters were starting to believe that a shock win could be on the cards – but it was still nerve wracking.

After a push in the Whitworth box, Unsworth were awarded a penalty – which was taken by Casey. If this goal went in, that effectively would kill off Whitworth and a few eyes were shut and fingers crossed. The effort was not hard enough and the keeper was easily able to save. Was this the turning point in the game? Could Whitworth pull off a come back and dump the Dragons out of the cup just like last year? Parents and supporters started to wonder.

That was, until Unsworth scored their fourth goal – potentially the goal of the game - a fantastic move down the wing, crossed in for Callum to head home. 4-2.

Whitworth were beaten. The icing on the cake was Casey’s run through the middle which opened up a gap just big enough to let off a shot that the Whitworth keeper had no chance of reaching. 5-2.

In the dying minutes, Oliver pulled off some more superb saves – many of which a premiere league goalkeeper would’ve been proud of. If even one or two of those had hit the back of the net, it could’ve been an uncomfortable last few minutes. However, thanks to the bravery and skill of our keeper, the result was safe and a well deserved win for the Dragons.

Goals: Callum (2), Jake (1), Aaron (1), Casey (1)