Staffordshire County League Cup Round One

Audley 0 Rocester Reserves 2

A good opening spell from the Romans' reserve team proved decisive in this League Cup tie against Division One side Audley on Saturday.

"We were superb for the first twenty minutes," said boss Steve Swanwick afterwards.

"At the start we played some of our best football of the season and were deservedly two goals up, but then we switched off, went to sleep, and all I can say is we were very poor after that."

Rocester went ahead nine minutes into the game when a well-worked attack resulted in three forwards breaking against one defender, and Paul Milward applied the finishing touch.

On fourteen minutes the lead was doubled when Colin Fletcher found the net from close range, and at that stage it looked as though Rocester would run away with the tie.

However, with the game seemingly won the side took their foot off the pedal and allowed Audley to make more of a fist of it.

Goalkeeper Karl Smith made an excellent save to tip a shot over the bar near the end to keep the two-goal lead intact. 

Ben Henderson (pictured), who normally plays at the heart of the defence, turned in a Man-of-the-Match performance in central midfield.

"He was superb, played out of his skin for us." enthused Swanwick.

The manager was disappointed with the way one or two of the Audley players behaved at the end of the match, particularly their goalkeeper who was clearly looking for some sort of confrontation with the Rocester bench.

"We had to show a lot of restraint at the end. I was spat at and it could have got very nasty, but we are above that sort of thing and I'm pleased to say that we were level-headed enough to just walk away from it and avoided a bigger incident."

The reserve team now have a ten-day break before their next league fixture, which is a home match against current champions Wolstanton United at Hillsfield on Wednesday 26th September.