A depleted 13-man Windscale squad produced a fine comeback at West Auckland to make progress in the Wearside League’s Monkwearmouth Cup.
They were 3-1 down on a difficult pitch but fought-back splendidly to take the tie 4-3 and make progress to the next round.
The match at Cockfield, the home of the West Auckland Tunns,was in the preliminary round of the competition and having beaten them at home a little over two weeks ago, the Atoms felt reasonably confident.
West Auckland settled the quicker of the two teams and took the lead when a cross from the right evaded right back Byran Todd and goalkeeper Andrew Richardson and was headed home by Liam Blighe.
Windscale had to weather the storm for the next 20 minutes and equalised with a sublime finish by target man Kieren Fraser. A frantic ten minutes followed with play from the home team becoming more physical and the referee doing well to keep 11 Tunn’s players on the field.
Following a ten-minute sin binning and three cautions issued to the home side, the referee finally lost patience with the West Auckland manager’s behaviour and dismissed him from the technical area.
The referee was considering an abandonment as the Manager initially refused to leave however, after a ten minute break in play, both sides retook the field to resume the final minutes of the first half.
The second period commenced like the first with West Auckland on top in the opening minutes, and a well worked cross and volley from Peter Brown sent them ahead again. The score quickly became 3-1 a few minutes later when Blighe converted a penalty.
Windscale’s fight back started when Reece Fretwell converted a cross from Leo Brennan with a superb volley which struck the underside of bar bouncing, down onto the goal line and into the net.
Darren Donald replaced the injured Ray Sempill midway through the second half and he had an almost immediate impact striking the post from 23 yards out.
The fight back was completed when a ball over the top by centre back Stephen Walker found Fretwell who squared to Fraser for his second bringing parity at 3-3 with around 15 minutes left.
The Atoms” were on top during this period but were unable to break through a resilient West Auckland rearguard.
The referee had indicated six additional minutes to be played and in the 94th minute of the game the ball broke to Tunn’s Liam Blighe who was denied his hat trick by a fingertip save from Windscale custodian Richardson.
From the resulting corner the ball was cleared up field to the feet of the young striker Brennan who cut inside, and in the last minute of the time added on fired the ball into the net for the winner.
