Under 12's. Away v Ashton United

  Result - Reddish North End 4 Ashton United 0

Now that I am back in the warm, fed and watered, I can reflect with considerable pride on another superb effort by the boys. This was win number 10 in the league this season, which is a magnificent achievement in itself. It was a really good performance, another clean sheet, four more goals – and this without two of our key players, and no substitutes!

The boys deserve every credit on another difficult away day. Just as in the previous match, they were kept waiting to start – we kicked off 25 minutes late as the goalmouths were in ghastly condition and not enough sand had been bought to help with the mopping up. It was a chilly and cheerless morning in an unprepossessing part of Ashton, and with captain Josh and central midfielder Mark unavailable today, we had three players in unfamiliar positions.

But as the game got started it quickly became just a matter of time before Reddish scored. We had plenty of pressure and caused problems every time we got forward, although the opener when it came was actually due to a mistake by the Ashton goalie, who dropped Sam’s cross-shot into the net. The goalie was to redeem himself, however, as he was to have an extremely busy morning and made several important stops, otherwise we would have been approaching double figures.

Callum quickly added number two after good work by Jamie and had the ref not been so influenced by the Ashton parents yelling ‘offside’ we could have any number of breaks on. To be fair, though, the ref gave a number of baffling offsides against us all on his own, but he let Callum’s goal stand even though it looked ‘off’ to me! But we deserved our lead, our makeshift defence coping pretty well when Ashton came forward, and the players warmed to their task.

The second half was more one-way traffic with Reddish swarming all over the Ashton area. After several near misses, Callum finished really well, finding the far corner with a good shot. Sam was denied numerous times, one excellent save by the keeper standing out, but our pressure had to tell and Jamie swept home a great corner from Michael for number four, again well deserved. Ashton had a few flurries forward; Callum actually had to make a save and Felix capped another excellent performance with a goal line clearance, but we were generally very comfortable. We had all the play – one fabulous passing move late on saw Sam smack the ball home and me celebrate loudly – only to see the ref had called another of his mystery offsides! The Ashton parents laughed at me but that’s no problem, there was precious little else for them to cheer as Reddish thoroughly deserved their win.

Daniel was named man-of-the-match today for a dominant display where, especially in the second half, he won everything in midfield, helped the defence and played some great balls forward. But all of the boys can take a lot from another great win.

A big thanks too to those Reddish parents who helped out getting one of the goalmouths playable. Without their help we may have had a postponement, and while this is all credit to our folks it isn’t right. There should have been a much greater willingness from Ashton parents to help their over-worked manager out, and I saw again today what a great bunch of people we have at Reddish. They stood for nearly two hours on an increasingly cold morning cheering the boys on – well done everyone!

Next week we have our re-arranged Challenge Cup match away at Brendon Bees.

Scorers : Callum B (2) Sam (1) Jamie (1)

Man of the match : Daniel