Photos: Helena Kaznowska
Halifax may feel heartily relieved, James may be completely gutted, but the real victor in this enthralling College Cup matchup was Mother Nature. It took two late goals from Halifax, who had gone into the match as firm favourites, to give them all three points against a James side who made the most of the driving torrents and a freak hailstorm to neutralise the College Cup favourites for long periods. James will feel aggrieved not to have taken at least a point from the game, but for Halifax a potential banana skin on the road to the knockout stages has now been avoided.
Despite being without regular starters Matt Mawdesley, Jack Beadle, Ash Daly and Dan Turley, Halifax began by dominating possession, but unable to launch any attacks able to penetrate the James box; the closest either side came to a chance was in the form of breaks down the right and left wings respectively from Halifax’s Mark Lund and James’ Ben Cooke.
Then the rain came.
Cascades, fathoms, torrents of it. And it was followed by a carpeting of hail, which, as any footballer can tell you, has no place on an astroturf in May.
The game immediately became one where both sides could do very, very little, due to the merciless conditions that had suddenly descended upon them. Tom Day’s cross whistling through the box without a touch was the only real action the half saw, despite a slight advantage in possession to the ‘Fax.
Hopes from the few faithful support for the spectacle of some entertaining football in the second half were raised and then dashed, as the rain abated for two minutes during the switchover, and then came back harder than ever. On the pitch, possession was still being controlled by Halifax, and they even made goalkeeper Paul Charnock make a save low but comfortably to his left. Seeing Alex Sharp come off after a heavy tackle, and then wincing with the rest of the support when James’ unfortunate Lewis Wilkie took a wet ball full in the face from three yards, one might have thought that James were about to crack.
The opposite was to prove true. After a hopeful break saw the ball enter the Halifax box, a burst of speed from Cooke allowed him to burst onto the ball and then finish well from the narrowest of angles past Johnny Sim’s near post. James 2nds 1-0 Halifax 1sts was the scoreline, and the biggest upset by far in this years’ College Cup looked to be squarely on the cards.
It seemed for so many of the remaining minutes that it was just turning out to be ‘one of those days’ for Halifax. Although the rain had now stopped, the sodden pitch prevented them from reaching James’ box more often than they would on any other day; half-chances didn’t quite fall for them when they did get there, and the one or two genuine chances that came their way were spurned. It seemed, however improbably, that James would hold on.
Yet Fate, as any sports fan knows, can be cruel in the extreme. Halifax made it 1-1 after a Tom Day effort from 25 yards appeared to slide under the form of Paul Charnock and go in off the post before being bundled in by the jubilant Halifax forwards. A second was to follow soon afte, when an Alex Tringham cross was met by Tom Ragan at the death to leave James shell-shocked and Halifax glad to have come through their ordeal.
Vision MOTM: Ben Cooke