Sat 27th March Morpeth 1sts v North Shields 1sts
It was league champions against fellow promoted North Shields in the final game of the season. An exhibition match of sorts, but one that neither side wanted to lose. This was about closing the gap from the visitor’s point of view between them and Morpeth.
The game started off rather tentatively, as expected, with each team checking out their opposition. North Shields tried to use their youth and pace by putting long balls beyond the defence, but these were well dealt with by the experienced back four of Fairbrother, Ogden, Kendall and Mulligan.
The visitors closed down play well which didn’t allow Morpeth much time on the ball at all. The long aerial balls were working well in so far as terrorising the North Shields defence, but the bright conditions made it difficult for even the Morpeth forwards to pick up the ball.
15 minutes in to the game Morpeth were awarded a short corner. Set pieces would have to be well executed if Morpeth were to win the game, and they certainly didn’t disappoint with their first attempt of the game. Will McLean sent a pin point accurate injection to Danecki to set it up perfectly for an Ogden special drag-flick into the roof of the net. 1-0 to Morpeth.
North Shields tried in vain to equalise before half time, but the home side defended well, marshalled superbly by Hugh Potter and Bruce McPate in the middle. Sitting back and luring North Shields out of their half worked well allowing wingers McLean and Gayner to break and cause havoc with counter attacks, but North Shields’ defence stayed just as solid keeping the score at 1-0 at the break.
Despite being happy with how they were playing, and clear on how the second half needed to be played, things couldn’t have gone worse for the Division 2 Champions as North Shields equalised immediately after the break.
Morpeth certainly had their chances to win the game back with many attempts squandered. Not wanting the game to finish a draw, or even worse a loss, Morpeth did not want to waste too many more decent chances. They ventured into their opposing D on several occasions but just couldn’t apply the finishing touch.
North Shields, ever resilient and refusing to give up, pushed to steal a late winner if possible. This ended up being their downfall however when gaps were left in the midfield. A North Shields attack was tidied up by the defence and moved quickly up front for Danecki to surge into the D drawing out the keeper to then centre the ball for youngster Ritchie Brown to apply the finishing touch to send the ball in to the back of the net.
2-1 the game finished to Morpeth capping off a fantastically successful season for the northerners. 21 wins from 22 games played, and 11 points clear of 2nd place. A great performance throughout the season from all of the squad. Going up into Division 1, Morpeth will look forward to this repeated fixture and hope that they will continue as they left off and do enough to stay in Division 1 for some time.
