Goalless draw on Merseyside
16 March 2010

AFC Liverpool 0-0 Fleetwood Town
North West Youth Alliance
Sunday 14th March 2010

By Mark Bowley

Another away fixture for the Fleetwood Town Under18’s in the North West Youth Alliance this time on the coast at Formby against AFC Liverpool.

This really was from the one extreme (playing at Highbury last week) to another, (Formby's home pitch) the surface of which looked as if the Household Cavalry had charged across it. However credit to both teams for putting on a very good contest.

The first fifteen minutes both sets of players were trying to acclimatise to the playing surface but once they had it was AFC that started to dominate the play and Fleetwood defence were put under a lot of pressure. The excellent town keeper Oboyle had to be at his best as AFC created three excellent opportunities to score. Eventually Town started to get into the game and the midfield duo of Few and Wynn began to dictate the play but without really creating too many chances.

At the break the management team pointed out the lack of creativity in front of goal and with this ringing in the ears of the entire team the second period started with Fleetwood dominating play and creating themselves four excellent opportunities to settle the game.

At the final whistle both teams had to settle for a point but manager Mick Sumner and his staff were delighted at the effort the young players had shown.

Summing up Mick added “Once again we had a very young side and this sort of performance should give the players plenty of confidence for the future we couldn’t have asked for any more from them. AFC Liverpool are a good team and most of them towered over ours young lads. However we battled well and played some good football ourselves and I though we might have just got all three points at the end".             

Man of the match Kieran O'Boyle (pictured)