Halifax 1sts 5-0 Derwent 3rds

By Roger Baxter

Manchester United 7-1 Roma, Liverpool 4-0 Real Madrid; there are days in football when everything just seems to go right. Halifax had one of those days. A scintillating first-half performance saw what must rank as the best football played in the College Cup so far this year, and a brief summer storm failed to saw the party as the ‘Fax ran out comfortable winners.

Halifax began the game as they intended to go on. After some moderate Derwent pressure down the left that amounted to very little, the ball broke forward in a wonderful, free-flowing move that culminated in Jack Beadle finishing with aplomb. It was 2-0 almost immediately afterwards; Halifax broke to win a corner on the right, and Tom Day’s flat cross was met in the middle of the area by the bullet head of Dom Petschak. The ball flew unstoppably into the net, and Halifax deserved their early domination.

3-0 followed, again almost instantaneously. Derwent’s defence were far too lax in allowing a through ball to split them in half, and Tom Ragan was there to plunder his team a third. The match was beyond doubt at this point, but Halifax continued to press, putting the shell-shocked Derwent players under a mountain of pressure, both with and without the ball.

It took slightly longer their fourth goal to come, but when it did, however, it was worth every second of the wait. After another marauding attack into the Derwent box was hastily cleared, the ball fell to Connor Brennan, twenty-five yards from goal on the left-hand side. He pirouetted past one defender before shifting the ball onto his right foot and letting fly with a beautiful, looping shot that Derwent goalkeeper Stu Bruce could do nothing about. This piece of magic was promptly followed by the half-time whistle, and the viewing crowd were left to digest the scintillating display they had just seen.

When the players came back to the pitch, Halifax, although still pressing, opted for a slightly more reserved approach in the second half, perhaps prompted by Derwent having made the game physical in response to their opponents’ attacking blitzkrieg. The bulk of possession, not to mention a monopoly on chances, still belonged to Brennan’s side. Petschak’s long crossfield ball found Beadle beautifully but the forward’s pullback was just behind his counterparts’ feet; another chance for Beadle was just seen off by Green’s legs in the Derwent area. In the midst of all this, Brennan was having an absolutely mind-boggling game, dancing around Derwent’s behemoths like a gingery Leo Messi on the sunlit astroturf.

Performances continued to be stellar for Halifax, but the weather did change. A monstrous rainstorm had the crowd scrambling for cover, and made the pitch much more difficult to play on. Nonetheless, Halifax found a cherry for the top of the cake when Alex Tringham struck from an Ash Daly corner to make it 5-0 to his side. That was the way the game finished, with Brennan saying, when asked to assess his team’s performance and their chances in the rest of the College Cup, “We’re just taking things one game at a time”. Modest words indeed, after his and his team’s performance.