Forthcoming Fixtures

Tigers Give City the Blues

Hyde United 3 - 0 MCFC Reserves

On a balmy July evening City's pre-season kicked of with its annual fixture at Ewen Fields, City's old reserve home, and the permanent home of our hosts, Hyde United. It was also the inaugural match for new reserve team manager, Steve Wigley, who recently joined us from Southampton to replace the largely ineffective Asa Hartford. It would prove to be a typical City baptism for Steve.

As early as the tenth minute Steve would have been tearing his hair out as City's goalkeeper, Kasper Schmeichel unfortunately handled the ball outside the area from a Nathan D'Laryea headed back pass. Now obviously the letter of the law states that the keeper should go for an early bath, but as this game was a friendly most normal referee's would have asked the manager to replace the keeper with the substitute keeper to allow the game to continue. Not so Mr Evans, he decided the red card was the right decision. Obviously Steve Wigley vehemently remonstrated with Mr Evans for his lack of common sense decision to leave City down to ten men.

The first thing that Lawrence Matthewson did when he came on to replace Ishmael Miller was to pick the ball out of the net from the resulting free kick scored directly from David Moore, Hyde's number nine who would leave another telling mark on the game in the second half.

The game never really got going for either side as both teams failed to create any real chances and City's midfield was too deep most of the time leaving lone striker, Karl Bermingham too exposed at times.

The breakthrough finally came though just before half time, but again for the home side. Mr Evans awarded a free kick for Gerry Harrison falling over himself on the left side of the pitch. Phil Salt floated a good free kick into the box and the tall classy Matty McNeil rose well to head into the far corner of the net.

The second half was a complete non event except for two incidents, Buckley scoring Hyde's third from a half cleared header mid way through the half and David Moore going in late on Micah Richards with his studs showing, forcing Micah to limp of the field. After Mr Evans had decided to apply the letter of the law at the start of the game, he then in his infinite wisdom decided not to even have a stern word with Moore.

So in my many years of watching the reserves we were beaten by Hyde for the first time, and deservedly so as we never got going and Hyde showed a lot more desire to win. We will never know however if the result might have been different had it stayed eleven versus eleven, but I would not bet against Hyde achieving a similar upset. So Mr Wigley, welcome to City.


Hyde: Westhead(GK), Lynch, Garner, Harrison, Hill, O'Kane(Capt.), Blackenridge, Salt, Moore, McNeil, Clee.

Subs:(All Used) Milligan, Buckley, Adams, Dean, Trialists.


MCFC: Schmeichel(GK), Warrender(Capt.), Collins, N D'Laryea, Richards, J D'Laryea, Croft, Flood, Miller, Bermingham, Ireland.

Subs:(All Used) Matthewson(GK), Laird, Bennett, Murphy, Etuhu, Johnson, Grimes.