Goodricke will be left wondering what went wrong after losing by three goals to a Halifax team that didn’t far outmatch them. Even Halifax captain Tom Ragan admitted: “we weren’t much better [than Goodricke] – we just wanted it more”.
After a fairly balanced opening period, Halifax took the lead: energetic midfielder Jack Beadle set up team-mate Andrew Wallace, whose shot was parried by Goodricke goalkeeper, Ed Foster, but Beadle was loitering to pounce on the rebound. Minutes later, Beadle beat the defence with an incisive run, but when one-on-one his idea was a little too cute; Foster collected his chipped shot with ease.
Wallace doubled Halifax’s advantage, tucking the ball into the bottom-right corner of the goal after a surging run down the wing by Tom Day. A spell of quality possession football from Goodricke followed, and they were almost rewarded when Jon Sharpe picked out Sam Lewis in the box, but Lewis’ stretching boot could not meet the ball with sufficient conviction. The half ended 2-0.
Goodricke pressure intensified with the start of the second half, the culmination of which was a couple of shots on target: one long-range effort from James Gutteridge, and another from the edge of the area from Lewis. Johnny Simon dealt comfortably with both. Goodricke became more vulnerable as more men pushed forward in search of a goal, and this enabled Halifax to counter-attack to devastating effect. Beadle’s searching though-ball found Ben Rea, who dribbled twenty yards into the Goodricke penalty area, and beat Foster with a classy finish.
At 3-0 down, the Goodricke resistance seemed to have collapsed; men were still getting forward, but forward play was lackadaisical, and Halifax players found themselves with increasingly abundant time and space. Beadle scored his second and Halifax’s fourth when put through on goal by Day. Foster dived to palm his first shot away, but only to the edge of the six-yard-box, where Beadle was able to tuck the ball into an unguarded goal.
Four-goal comebacks are not unheard of lately, but a very tidy Sam Lewis goal for Goodricke was only a consolation: after some neat interplay between Danny Munro, Jon Sharpe, and Ben Smith, Lewis dribbled diagonally across the Halifax box and scored with a well-placed low strike. If a moment was needed to allay any suspicions of a St. James’ Park repeat, it came minutes later, when Smith found himself in a promising position but shot dismally wide.
Ragan said of the game: “we finally got the result our performances have merited all season, and we put our chances away – that always helps”. Goodricke captain Lewis put the poor result down to wastefulness: “When we had them penned in at the start of the second half, I thought: if they weather the storm, they’ll be ok”, adding: “I don’t begrudge them the win”.
Apparantly Ed Foster was in goal for halifax and Johnny Simon was the goodricke goalkeeper in the second half?!
I’ve always been a big fan of Jonny Simon. Its nice of Foster to do a spell in goal for both sides aswell.
Apologies for the errors, they’ve now been amended.