IN HIS first game in charge of City's reserve team last night, first team coach Ian Crook was pleased with the performance, attitude and result, with the match ending all-square against Barnet at Carrow Road.

Jamie Cureton's second half poacher's strike cancelled out Ismail Yakubu's first half header. Yakubu powerfully headed home Nikcy Deverdics's left-wing corner 16 minutes in to give the visitors the lead. Seven minutes in to the second half City drew level when Simon Lappin met Damon Lathrope's corner with a crisp volley that Cureton diverted home from close range.

Speaking exclusively to canaries.co.uk, Crook said: "Genuinely I'd love to have won but this is the first game we'd had here for a while, some of these boys also haven't played for a while. Results are secondary here and tend to come with performances as well."

Crook was pleased with how his first match went and with the attitude of the players: "It was good, the boys showed a good attitude to it, it is always difficult for the boys that are coming back from first team duty to come back in to this game.

"Certainly second half we stepped up the ante a little bit and the youth team players who came on gave us an extra bit of life."

City reserves are in action again on Monday, February 23 against Great Yarmouth Town at Carrow Road and Crook was asked whether he saw this as another opportunity for players to get some game time under their belts: "Yes, because there's just been a lot of the boys, people like Carney and Killen that haven't played for quite a while in terms of starting the game and getting through 70 minutes, so it was good to get them through that and next week we will step that up again."