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Photos: Oliver Todd
Alcuin spanked Langwith with six second-half goals including a fine hat-trick from Alex Brown.
Captain Brad Wood headed Alcuin into the lead after an hour, and after that Langwith’s defence crumbled in spectacular style.
Brown scored the next two, including a penalty, before Sim Reiss added a fourth, Brown secured his hat-trick with the fifth and Pickard provided the icing on the cake with a sixth.
Few would have predicted such a result after a tepid first half which reflected the players’ rustiness after weeks of fixture cancellations.
Many passes went astray from both sides and there was no real pattern to the game with much of the play being congested in midfield. Alcuin were initially the brighter side but created very few openings; Brown’s tame shot was the only feature of the first 20 minutes.
Langwith gradually improved, as Andy Hutt clipped in a clever cross from the right, but Finn McGuire could not stretch enough to apply any meaningful contact from James MacDonald’s flick header.
Then Alcuin’s winger Will Taylor tricked his way into the penalty area from the left touchline but his wild shot nearly went out for a throw-in.
His next contribution, however, was far better. After beating three players, Taylor’s sumptuous cross was headed wastefully wide of the far post by Brown, who was no more than seven yards out.
The half ended goalless and will be one of the more forgetful 45 minutes we see on 22 Acres this term.
The second half began in a similar fashion as Langwith were content to sit back and play long balls on the counter-attack.
But Alcuin finally found a way through. Taylor’s corner was directed to the near post and nobody in yellow tracked Brad Wood’s run. The centre-back headed powerfully past Rudden via a slight deflection to give his side the lead.
Brown had a great chance to immediately double Alcuin’s advantage after finding himself one-on-one against Rudden, but the ‘keeper dived low to his right to brilliantly parry his smashed effort.
But Brown soon did make it 2-0 after 70 minutes. Leonidas Kanonis, hovering just outside the D, slipped a reverse pass to Brown on the left, who clinically drilled a low shot into the far post.
Langwith simply could not get out of their own half and were tiring rapidly; Alcuin ravenously sought more goals against the wounded animal.
Kanonis should have scored after he blazed his volley over from six yards, but seconds later, Phil Bowers felt contact from Sam Morley in the areas and promptly went down like a ton of bricks. The referee awarded a penalty and Brown rocketed the ball into the top corner to make it 3-0.
Rudden then had a David James moment as he rushed out of his goal to close down Sim Reiss, who was outside the area and still had defenders to beat. The left-back simply dinked the ball over Rudden to make it 4-0.
And Brown showed no mercy as he evaded several tackles and danced around Rudden to slot the ball home, all after Langwith failed to clear a long ball. He bagged his hat-trick and the match ball.
The sixth goal came in added time at the end when Taylor crossed for Damian Pickard, whose shot deflected off a Langwith defender past a frozen Rudden.
The result means Alcuin top the spring term league table on goal difference. Captain Brad Wood was happy with his side’s progress: “Last term we didn’t have that touch in front of goal, but I’m happy that today we scored goals and kept a clean sheet.”
Meanwhile, Langwith’s Andy Hutt said: “It was a tight match in the first half. We tried to change things in the second half and it didn’t work and we collapsed in the last fifteen minutes. But it was difficult for us because we had four or five key players missing.”
Vision MOTM: Alex Brown