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Latest News

Punished By Rovers

Match: Carlisle United Reserves v Morecambe Reserves

Our next game was a Reserve home fixture against Morecambe on the Brunton Park pitch. We started off really well but ended up losing the game by 2 – 1. After playing so well as a team in the last Reserve game against Sheffield United, it was disappointing to go down in this one, although it was always going to be a hard act to follow.

We had more of the Youth team out for this one with Andy Cook, Conor Tinnion and Alex Mitchell all involved, so it was a much younger side. Morecambe always seem to be a bit of a bogey team for us, and we took our foot off the pedal a bit, even though we did get ourselves in front.

They got back in to it with a deflected goal and we got a bit of a telling off at half-time. Second half it didn’t happen for us and we were poor all round, from start to finish. There’s not much you can say about it really. As young players we can just learn from it and try and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The next day I went with the squad to Newcastle United, where they played a ‘behind closed doors’ match against a Newcastle XI. I didn’t play, but it was still enjoyable as I had dinner with the first-team lads at Newcastle, so it was good to go there and see their set up.

Their training facilities were top class. Obviously I would have liked to have been involved in the game but, to be fair, I was tired from the game the night before. I had been told beforehand that I wasn’t going to play so it wasn’t as though I got there and was disappointed.

On Wednesday we had a double session, training in the morning and then on to the gym. Physically I would say that was a fairly hard week.

It was college as normal on the Thursday, and then on Friday we trained for the Youth Alliance Cup match away at Tranmere the following day. That was a game that we were all looking forward to.

Youth Alliance Cup Match: Tranmere Rovers v Carlisle United

As it happens, it was one of the strangest games that I have ever been involved with. I’ve never played in one quite like it. We went 1 – 0 down through a really sloppy goal. We had a corner and we took it short so we ended up losing the ball. That put everybody out of position… including me… and we couldn’t get back in time. They broke away quickly and punished us.

It was unlucky from our point of view but really, from then on, we had loads of chances to win the game. We just couldn’t get the ball into the back of the net for some reason. It was really disappointing as that’s us out of the Cup competitions for this season and we feel that we should have done better.

We do have a big game to look forward to though. We play Burnley on Saturday and, if we win there then we’re on track to win the League. It’s the game of the season for us as far as League fixtures go.

I’ll be completely honest and say that if we lose then I think we’re out of it, so it’s all or nothing really. It would have been nice to be playing this one at home, but the plus side is that Burnley have good facilities and the pitches down there are decent, and that will suit us.

I’ll bring you up to date on what happened next time.

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