West Riding County Cup Second Round – Saturday 8th December
Full-time: Idle FC 2-0 Elland United
Goals: A. Medley, J. Strudwick
MOTM: M. Strudwick
After seeing off Beeston in the opening round of the County Cup, Idle were set to host Halifax side, Elland United in the second round. However, Idle’s pitch was in no fit state to play any level of football last week and thus the fixture rolled over to this week.
With the pitch still in poor condition, it meant a switch of venue to Thornton Recreation Centre on their 4G surface. And this was much to Idle’s advantage whose passing football generally suits an artificial surface.
Elland had a couple of players Idle had faced previously when they wore the colours of Ealandians last season and it seemed they turned up thinking they’d already won the game.
However this wasn’t to be the case as Idle began much the better side, exploiting the Elland right-back who was poor to say the least. We’ll call him Lurch from now on, as in Lurch The Adams Family Butler. Adam Medley was having the time of his life down the left-wing, skinning the Elland defence every time he got the ball. Here’s some footage of Lurch trying to defend against Medley…
And it was Medley who opened the scoring with a lovely first-time curling effort into the top corner. There was some top quality build up play too with Tom Simonett holding the ball up well and threading the pass through to Medley who applied the finish. 1-0.
Idle were playing well and Elland were trying to assert their physicality with some questionable tackling.
There was the classic shout of “They don’t like it when you get into them do they lads?!”. Not heard that one before have we boys…?
Anyway, Idle soon extended their lead thanks to another Jack Strudwick special.
Despite moving Lurch to centre-back and reverting to a back four, the new right-back managed to concede a free-kick on the left touchline.
Up stepped J. Strudwick to curl home and absolute beauty to put Idle 2-0 up!
Unfortunately it wasn’t all sunshine and rose and Carl Dawson ended up falling victim to the persistent awful tackling from Elland. After a bit of a battle with the Elland centre midfielder, the Idle man took studs down the calf and an elbow to the eye socket for good measure resulting in what resembled the damage done by a right-back from Mike Tyson. However the referee didn’t want to get his cards out despite the clear damage done.
Idle were relatively solid in the first half overall with the defence sweeping up lost of the danger and Marcus Strudwick pulling off a world class save in the to tip a shop from the edge of the area around the far post.
Half-time came with the score at 2-0.
The second half was a much more cagey affair with Elland pushing to get back in the game and Idle working hard defensively to keep them out.
Once again, the Idle defence were pretty much impenetrable with Luke Chandler, Conor Halligan and Luke Gray dominating the Elland attack in the most part.
M. Strudwick again made a couple of key saves to keep his clean sheet intact. A one-on-one with the Elland centre midfielder again saw the keeper stand up strong and save the shot before being stamped on. Yet another red card offence which wasn’t dealt with.
However, M. Strudwick’s performance between the sticks was certainly enough to earn him this weeks Man of the Match Award, sponsored by the Medley Family.
The Idle lads continued to battle away, protect their lead and hit Elland on the break with the pace of Medley and Ryan Mitchell.
Mitchell had Idle’s best chance of the second half after a lung bursting run to get forward from right-wing back, he found himself in space in the box but was forced wide and his eventual shot rattled the side netting.
Despite missed opportunities, it turned out two goals were enough on the day with the whole team defending well and working hard for each other which is exactly what’s needed in games like this.
In the end, Idle march into the third round of the County Cup to face Springhead United Reserves with a hard-fought 2-0 victory.
All Idle aren’t we lads?!
The Playmaker 
Posted on December 11, 2018
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