Mid Wilts Under 18 Cup Final
Warminster Highbury Youth Under 18 versus Bradford Town.
Highbury travelled to Melksham to play Bradford Town in the Mid Wilts Under 18 Cup Final. Although Highbury had beaten Bradford 2-1 earlier in the season, they had lost to them 3-0 only a fortnight ago, resulting in Highbury finishing 3rd, 1 point behind Bradford in 2nd place in the Under 18 league.
The game started with Bradford full of confidence having just won runners up slot, and for the first 5 minutes Highbury couldn’t get out of their own half. However, in the 6th minute a long clearance deceived the Bradford defence, allowing DJ Wheeler to burst through, and with a calm finish he put Highbury 1-0 up. The next 15 minutes continued in the same vein with Highbury hanging on with just one more chance falling to DJ, when he was unfortunately caught off side.
As the half progressed Highbury started to gain more confidence and more possession helped by the resolute tackling of Sam Webster and Joe Dufosee and tireless running of Sam McEntee. With half time looming, the large crowd of Bradford followers got louder and louder but couldn’t help their team find a way past Highbury’s outstanding defence of Matt Russell, Sam Couch, Ryan North and especially Tom Reynolds, and on the only occasion when they did, goalkeeper Tom Lucas was at his best, and kept the score 1-0 at half time.
The second half started with Bradford having a lot of possession without threatening the Highbury goal, whilst Highbury began to look more dangerous with regular counter attacks. As the game progressed, the exceptional Tom Golledge started to dominate and supply the Highbury forward line with more ammunition. With 10 minutes left Highbury midfielder Ali Rose hit the cross bar with a 20 yard thunderbolt, with the ball cannoning down onto the line and back into play. Unfortunately, there was no Russian linesman to award the goal. As time started to run out and with the tension growing, Highbury got deeper and deeper trying to protect their lead, leaving Chikiah Douglas up front on his own, doing a fine impersonation of Didier Drogba, with occasional support from wingers Alex Smith and Nathan Salmons. Then in the 89th minute, Nathan broke down the right wing, crossed the ball in for Chikiah to make it 2-0 and win the cup for Highbury.
This was an outstanding achievement, not just for the team, but for the whole squad, as all but one of them will qualify as under 18s next season.