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| Saturday 15 October 2005 Danehill 3 East Court 8 THE Jekyll and Hyde nature of East Court's once miserly defence threatened to derail East Court's bid for cup glory for the second time in three weeks. Two weeks ago they capitulated to Burfield Tyres in the first 15 minutes and last Saturday they gave away three more sloppy goals despite being on top of their opponents for the majority of the game. Goalkeeper Daniel Lamprell can be rightly angry with the goals that were given away as, on an afternoon where he had little to do, he was given little to no chance with any of the goals. East Court started brightly and had their hosts on the back foot for the first quarter of an hour before a combination of niggly fouls and the surroundings succeeded in slowing the game down and given Danehill the opportunity to compete on a more even basis. Despite this it was still East Court doing most of the attacking before some sloppy play at the back gifted Danehill their first opportunity. The East Court defence recovered quickly to snuff out the danger. Eventually the pressure told on Danehill and after a surging run from centre back Daniel Medcalf, East Court took the lead. Medcalf was bought down cynically on the edge of the area and Lee Champion fired the resulting free kick through a crowd of bodies into the back of the net. This should have been the time for East Court to push on and finish the game and they should have done but James Salter's finish from a right wing cross was adjudged not to have crossed the line. Then minutes before half time Danehill were level. A free kick was swung in and a Danehill striker nodded it down into the danger area. His strike partner was first to react and placed the ball past Lamprell from 8 yards out. At the start of the second half things went from bad to worse as Lee Champion lost the ball and the Danehill player gleefully ran through on Lamprell before scoring to put the home side 2-1 up. This signalled the start of a manic 10 minutes which saw East Court take a 5-3 lead. Goals from Ross Kelly, Nick Clarkson-Tooze and Billy Denyer gave East Court a 4-2 lead before Danehill pulled one back from another free kick. The ball was played square and the East Court wall failed to charge the shot down. Adam Shillibeer got his head to hit but only succeeded in deflecting it into the top corner, giving Lamprell no chance. After this minor scare East Court stretched away again. James Salter scored his first of the season to make it 5-3 before Kelly sealed the win. Two more goals followed as East Court began to run riot against a tiring home defence. The seventh was scored by Denyer and the eighth was fired home by Kelly to complete his hat-trick and score his tenth of the season. Substitute Paul Bishop was released down the right wing and his first time cross was fired in low and hard towards the near post where Kelly got in front of his man to steer the ball into the back of the net giving the keeper no chance. It could have been even better as with the clock ticking down Bishop thought he had the ball in the back of the net only for the referee to wave play on. Later it was confirmed that the ball had indeed crossed the line. But the action was far from over, Danehill could only clear to the edge of the box and a shot was fired back in. With the keeper still recovering from Bishop's effort a defender was left on the line with no option to put his hands up and deflect it over the bar. Incredibly the referee didn?t see it and a corner was given. Shortly after the referee blew his whistle for full-time and East Court were safely through to the quarter finals of the Stubbins Challenge Cup. Team: D.Lamprell, A.Wright (P.Bishop), N.Palmer, S.Nickols (B.Sunderland), D.Medcalf, A.Shillibeer, N.Clarkson-Tooze, B.Denyer, R.Kelly, L.Champion, J.Salter |