A FIESTY AFFAIR

THERE was an incident-packed FA Cup preliminary round encounter here last Sunday as we played out a 1-1 draw with Chasetown.
The game burst into action straight away when the visitors went close to opening the scoring within seconds of kick-off as Chris Baker fired inches wide.
With just ten minutes on the clock a collision between Dave Reynolds and visiting ‘keeper, Curtis Pond, both forced to leave the field following lengthy treatment with both players sustaining head injuries.
There was plenty of cut-and-thrust as the half went on with Matt Birley going close before Chasetown took the lead when Will Whielden fired home with a sweet strike from distance.
Matt Gwynne saved well to deny Whielden as the opening period went on, but after Mark Danks fired over, we drew level right on the stroke of half-time as Danks rattled the woodwork and youngster, Aaron Brett, was on hand to guide the ball home.
It gave us a massive boost going into the second period, where things started to hot up with the tackles flying in.
Just before the hour-mark, Brad Birch was given a straight red card for a challenge on Chad Degville-Smith and this inspired our visitors as they stepped up a pace to increase the pressure on the City back-line.
Both Grant Ryan and George Cater went close for the Scholars whilst at the other end, the young Chasetown substitute ‘keeper was lucky only to see yellow after handling outside his area to deny Brett.
There were eight yellow cards shown in the second half and two reds as O’Neil was dismissed for the visitors.
As the clock ticked down, James Baldwin went close for City and Gwynne did well to thwart Luke Davies as it ended level with both teams forced to do it all over again on Tuesday evening.

CITY: Gwynne, Weir, Griffiths (Baldwin 81), Fishwick, M Smith, Birch, Hayward, Birley, Danks (Albert 62), Reynolds (Brett 12), J Smith. Subs not used: Dayus, Ruddock, Harris-James, Devlin.

Attendance: 572.