Guisborough Town 5-1 Redcar Town (Isuzu FA Vase 2nd Qualifying Round)

Match Report

Guisborough Town swept aside Teesside neighbours Redcar Town with a thoroughly convincing 5-1 victory at the KGV Stadium on Friday night to progress easily to the next round of the FA Vase.

The Priorymen cruised into a 3-0 lead by half-time – and although plucky Redcar pulled a goal back 13 minutes after half-time to briefly spark hopes of an unlikely rally – two goals from substitute Mikey McGee on his comeback from injury restored Guisborough’s almost total dominance.

After the game Guisborough Assistant Manager Paul Crager – standing in for his Manager Steve Bell who is serving a three-match ban for his red card in a pre-season match at Thornaby – commented:

Encounters like tonight against opposition from a lower division can always be tricky as we ourselves found out in last season’s North Riding Senior Cup. But for the majority of this game I thought the lads got the job done well.

We played with good intensity both with and without the ball but in the end I thought we could have been even more ruthless than we actually were. In the first half we played some very good football and scored two terrific goals, especially the second of the two by Kurt Howes. In the second half we became a bit sloppy at times and gave away a poor goal.

But after that mini-setback the lads just went up another level and even though we got two more goals through Mikey McGee the scoreline could and should have been much greater. A very pleasing aspect of the night was to see some of our injured players like Mikey and Dylan McAvoy getting back out on the pitch at last which puts us in good shape for the up and coming period ahead. All in all, it was a good night’s work for all involved.

After dominating from the start, it took the Priorymen 22 minutes to take the lead with defender James Frazer getting into the Redcar box and twisting and turning to find midfielder Jack Bailey who slotted home cleverly into the bottom corner.

SCINTILLATING RUN

Just five minutes later came the goal of the game as Ty O’Neill set Kurt Howes on a scintillating run down the left and as the Redcar ’keeper advanced Howes found the far corner of the net beautifully to double his side’s lead.

On 41 minutes Guisborough went 3-0 up when good work by Ben Cummins set up Ty O’Neill to chip neatly beyond the keeper for an audacious goal. At the start of the second half it was good to see left back Dylan McAvoy returning from injury in place of Cal Williams.

Redcar pulled one back in the 58th minute when former Guisborough striker Connor Smith ran clear to score after going one on one with home ‘keeper Robert Dean.

Another big boost for Guisborough came when Mikey McGee at last returned from injury and it didn’t take him long to make a big impression, pouncing on a loose ball that the Redcar ‘keeper couldn’t hold on to hammer home in the 70th minute for 4-1 to the Priorymen.

Five minutes later McGee got his second goal when he latched on to an O’Neill pass to cleverly steer the ball home into the bottom left hand corner. Amazingly, just one minute later, McGee had a golden opportunity to complete a hat-trick with the space of just six minutes, but he shot over the bar in what was probably the easiest of his three chances.

In the end, it was a very comfortable for the Priorymen as they marched on to the third round of the Vase in front of an excellent Friday night KGV crowd of 301.

Report: Bill Perfitt