Under-18s overcome red card to beat Baggies

Our Under-18s survived being reduced to 10 men to complete a second-half turnaround and extend their unbeaten run with a 2-1 victory at West Bromwich Albion on Saturday lunchtime.

Trailing to a penalty from Adriel Walker despite a bright first-half performance, we restored parity shortly after the restart through Mikey Moore – only to then lose left-back Maeson King to a red card with only 54 minutes played.

But we rallied brilliantly, taking the lead almost immediately through Damola Ajayi’s well-taken strike and continuing to produce some bright football on the way to securing a fifth consecutive win in all competitions.

We played some nice stuff in the first half, Moore hitting the post in one of a number of chances for the team, but it was the Baggies who took the lead on the half-hour mark after Callum Olusesi was penalised for a collision with an opponent in the box and Walker fired the resultant spot-kick past Carey Bloedorn.

Captain Archie Chaplin made an outstanding block just before half-time to prevent the hosts from doubling their lead, but you sensed we could and perhaps should have gone in at the break with at least one goal to our name.

Thankfully, it didn’t take long for one to materialise after the restart as Moore finished off another good team move with a fine piece of individual skill to fire past Ben Cisse in the Baggies’ goal with 49 minutes on the watch.

We suffered a blow five minutes later as King was shown a straight red card after the referee deemed him to have dragged his opponent back as the last man amid a West Brom counter-attack, but we got straight back on the front foot and took the lead just a minute later when we broke away centrally and Ajayi finished well under pressure from his marker and the advancing Cisse.

Moore later saw a header saved by Cisse and although the home side tried to capitalise on their man advantage to force an equaliser in the closing stages, we stood firm to see out a well-earned win.

‘An excellent performance’

Under-18s Coach Stuart Lewis was delighted with his side’s display, telling us: “I thought it was an excellent performance from the players in the first half – that was probably our best footballing performance of the season so far, although we lacked a bit of end product – and then we showed brilliant character and resilience in the second half to win the game, so it was a really pleasing, positive day.

“Tyrese Hall was excellent, James Rowswell too, it was another goal for Mikey Moore – he’s in good form – and it was great to have Damola back among the goals with a brilliant finish, so there were lots of positives from the performance. We obviously played for a long period of time with 10 men, but we still played our football and it was great to come away with the win.”