Match Report

‘Zero excuses’ from Manager as Guisborough crash out of FA Cup

Guisborough Town 0, Thornaby 1

(Emirates FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round)

Guisborough Town suffered a shock defeat at home to Thornaby on Saturday as they were knocked out of the FA Cup at the first hurdle.

It was a very frustrating afternoon for the Priorymen in front of a bumper derby crowd of 460, with a 31st minute own goal sealing a 0-1 defeat for the home side.

After the match, Guisborough Town Manager Nathan Haslam candidly commented: “Zero excuses from me today and well done to Thornaby who deserved their victory.

“It’s incredibly disappointing as obviously the FA Cup is a competition you want to do well in and one that over the years I’ve done relatively well with my teams.

“We just weren’t good enough on the day today – we went through the motions and didn’t create enough and missing the penalty at the end just epitomised the kind of disappointing day that we had,” added Nathan.

Guisborough started brightly and almost went ahead in the first few minutes but a fierce Matty Willshaw effort was saved virtually at point blank by the Thornaby ‘keeper.

Thornaby took the lead rather fortuitously on 31 minutes when a shot was unluckily deflected into his own net by James Frazer, leaving Guisborough ‘keeper Ryan Catterick stranded.

It stayed 1-0 to Thornaby at half-time and after the break Guisborough came close to equalising in the 68th minute when a Toluwani Osiyemi shot agonisingly struck a post.

LAST MINUTE LIFELINE WASTED!

Guisborough laboured through the rest of the half but got a lifeline a minute from normal time when Tolu was brought down in the Thornaby penalty area and the referee pointed to the spot.

But Matty Willshaw, normally a reliable penalty taker, must have temporarily thought he was at Twickenham because his spot kick sailed way over the bar and that was that for Guisborough’s FA Cup hopes for another season.

One feasible explanation for Guisborough’s poor showing is that this was their first competitive match of the season whereas Thornaby had four league matches already under their belts and this certainly showed in terms of their competitive match fitness compared to the Priorymen’s.

Guisborough now look forward to this coming Tuesday, 11 August when they travel to Heaton Stannington for their opening Northern Premier League East Division fixture of the season.

Nathan added: “In a way I’m glad this defeat by Thornaby has happened now rather than three or four games down the line.

“Today has been a wake up call for us so we now have a quick turnaround for the Heaton game on Tuesday and if we play anything like we have today we’re not going to get anything out of the game.

“It’ll be a tough game for us but we’ve got enough quality in our team to do some damage. There will be changes after the disappointing performance today and it will be down to the squad to try and get a result at Heaton,” said Nathan.

Report by Bill Perfitt.