Fleetwood Town Reserves 2 Burscough Reserves 2
Lancashire League Cup – Group Match
15th February 2008
Goals: FTFC – Alex Taylor 2

In a game that saw Town completely dominate, they had to wait until the 70th minute to open the scoring. The game should have been over as a contest within the first quarter of an hour as Fleetwood missed a glut of goal scoring opportunties. Alex Taylor alone could have had a hat trick and the Referee turned down two blatant penalty appeals as Fleetwood started as well as they have all season. The only threat to Mike Hale's goal came from the pitch with the surface rapidly drying out and is becoming extremely difficult to play on. Twice Hale was deceived by outrageous bounces and on one occasion completely missed his kick only to recover and scramble the ball off his goal line. The keeper only had one real effort to deal with from Burscough's lone striker, this in the last ten minutes of the game, when he produced a fine diving save to his left.

By this time the game was all but over with Fleetwood holding a two-goal lead. The spark that finally broke the deadlock was, in the 70th minute, the introduction of Joel Cowell and switching to three forwards. Cowell made an instant impact and his link up play with young fullback Ollie Kelly caused Burscough no end of problems. The first goal came from a surging run from Kelly after being sent away by Kyle Webster. Kelly cut inside and had the presence of mind to pick out Taylor on the edge of the box who finished with a crisp shot into the bottom corner. Town scored their second soon after when Cowell sped clear following a long pass from Nicky Ellis, Cowell took the ball round the advancing keeper and looked like notching his 14th goal of the campaign only for Taylor to pinch his glory, rolling the ball into an empty net.

This result should mean that qualification for the next phase of the competition is assured but, to be honest, I really have no idea how the format works, with six teams in our group and only playing three games, you might have to win all three to go through.

Team: Mike Hale, Ollie Kelly, Shaun Beeley (Joel Cowell 70), Rik Bryan, Nicky Ellis, Kyle Webster, Jimmy Hone (Jamie Wright 72), Anthony Warwick, Chris Watkinson (Paul Bailey 72), Alex Taylor, Ashley Dunn.