Last week the youth team played their first FA Youth Cup match of the season.
Due to the current league standing of the first team and regardless of our Premier Academy League status, this season we had to enter the competition in the first round proper, with Premier League and Championship based teams not entering until round three.
As a result we entered the hat with a number of smaller clubs who had done well to reach this stage of the competition and, similar to the first team, were drawn away at a non-league side in the shape of South London side Dulwich Hamlet.
Following the draw it was important for us to prepare for this fixture in the correct manner and ensure the players had the right state of mind to perform as they should against lower league opposition. As part of this preparation I travelled to Dulwich to watch them beat Chelmsford City very convincingly in the previous round and was very impressed with the performance. They were strong, quick and had a number of good individuals.
It proved to be a tough match, we took the lead in the first half through David Nwaogu and could and should have added to our goal tally but were guilty of missing some good goalscoring chances and were unlucky on a couple of occasions too.
We were eventually made to pay for our missed chances as Dulwich Hamlet equalised with around 10 minutes remaining forcing extra time. The score remained 1-1 after the extra 30 minutes, FA Youth Cup rules state that there must be a result on the night, which obviously lead to a penalty shoot-out.
Jed Steer saved the first Dulwich penalty and they missed their second, our players were all successful from the spot and we progressed to the second round.
The draw has since been made and once more we will be on the road, this time a trip to Torquay United is on the cards. If we play to our full potential we will have a very good chance of progressing to the third round and hopefully a home draw.
I will of course provide full details of the Torquay United game following the fixture which is to be played on Wednesday, November 18.
Enjoy the game.
Ricky Martin
Academy Manager
