Town youngsters battle for the points at Lye

FOOTBALL

Lye Town 0-2 Stratford Town Youth

Midland Floodlit Youth League, Premier Division South

Report by Bryan Hale

BRADLEY West and Josh Beresford netted the goals as Stratford Town Youth returned to winning ways with a battling performance at Lye on Wednesday evening.

There was little to choose between the sides in a closely-fought first half. Both Ben Couki and Harry Hartin had on-target strikes well saved while in between Town keeper Archie Donaldson also had to be on his toes to deal with Lye’s best effort of the half as the interval was reached with the game still goalless.

But it was a different story after the restart as Town changed their formation and upped their tempo to totally dominate the second half.

After only five minutes, West went close to opening the scoring and soon after he fired Town into the lead with a composed finish following a strong run down the right and a pinpoint cross from George Dawson, who had made his first-team debut from the subs bench at Dorchester 48 hours earlier.

Town were in control from then on with eyecatching contributions from Frankie Evans and Dan Green who were both in the starting line-up for the first time.

The points were secured when Josh Aspinall-Smith and Hartin combined to set up a chance for Beresford who slotted the ball past the helpless Lye keeper.