Jamie Crowther, Under 18’s Head Coach, gave his verdict on Tuesday’s dramatic FA Youth Cup victory over Harrogate Town AFC.
Q: Jamie, how would you sum that one up?
Jamie: “It’s unbelievable in any game to score right at the death, and to go on and win the game. I think overall over the 90 minutes, we deserved the win. We created many good chances and dominated possession.
“The first 10 minutes saw us take a little bit of time to grow into it, but we settled down and grew into the game. I said to the players that this win is due to the hard work we’ve put in over the last five or six weeks. We’ve played well and not got the results we’ve wanted, but they’ve played well tonight and capped it off with a great result.”
Q: Is this a sign of things to come?
Jamie: “The performance today, this is what we’ve played like for the last three or four weeks. We’ve lost our last two games 1-0 but the performances have been there, and I think I’ve said it to the lads, we’ve been excellent until we get to the 18-yard box.”
“It was the same story today, we defended well and our build up play was excellent, we just need to take our chances and it sums it up that our right-back has popped up and scored the winning goal right at the death.”
Luke Partington scored the winning goal from right-back and couldn’t believe his luck. He gave his thoughts on a dramatic evening in Harrogate:
Q: Luke, how are you feeling at the minute?
“It feels unreal. It doesn’t feel real, like I’ve just scored. We deserved it in the end, we created loads of chances that we should have scored, but it is what it is and we’ve come away with the victory.
“I played it into Dallas (Omoruyi) and he set me up, I was already driving down the wing. I actually slipped a bit and ended up turning my man. I was actually aiming to shoot far post, but it ended up going near post. I slipped over again, and I didn’t see it go in, I just heard screaming and we all started celebrating.”
Q: Did you imagine something like this happening before kick-off?
“We were talking about celebrations on the bus on the way to the game and what we’d do, and I said that I’m not going to score, so it’s all a bit unreal.”
