Bird in Hand 4-0 FC Village
16/09/06 - Wirral Junior Cup

FC Village’s first cup adventure of the season ended in disappointment as they, as expected went out to division 1 table toppers Bird in Hand. With Lee W, Jay, Cottier and Ritchie all unavailable things got worse when the side arrived at the ground as both Dava and Nic failed to turn up due to car problems. This left the side looking somewhat weakened as they managed to field a starting line up but with several players playing in unfamiliar positions. However they certainly gave their more illustrious opponents a scare as they started brightly and could have opened the scoring when Sweeney broke free and crossed for Colin whose header just went over the bar. With Sweeney pulling the strings in midfield and Maggot helping Colin up front the Village were doing well. In defence Booey and Lee were superb as they kept the Bird at bay. Then well in to the latter stages of the half the Bird broke clear when it could easily have been given as offside and a forward crossed for one of his team mates to score with ease. Just before half time all their hard work seemed to have been wasted when Lee kicked out at a forward in the area but only after he had been shoved all over the place. Instead of getting a free kick the ref gave the Bird a penalty but the player blasted his shot over the bar. So still in with a shout at the interval the Village knew they had done well but were still up against it. However a few minutes in to the second half disaster struck as a shot slipped under the diving Paul in goal to make it 2-0 to the Bird and that was really it for them. The Village battled to the end and had several half chances but to be fair they just didn’t have enough in their locker. They certainly weren’t embarrassed but were lacking in certain areas and the Bird were well on their way to the second round. A great shot from outside the area made it 3-0 but when fourth goal was scored right on the final whistle that was somewhat unfair on the Village lads as the difference in the game definitely wasn’t worth the four goal margin there was in the end. The boys especially Booey (MOM), Lee and Sweeney had done well but it just wasn’t good enough on the day.