Craig Young slots the second goal in his hat-trick past Nathan Pattimore on Saturday at Northfield. (Picture by Brian Green, 0541197)
North 4, St Martin’s 1
CRAIG YOUNG produced the perfect response to his recent red card in the Jackson – a hat-trick to secure three vital Priaulx points.
The young Northerner was the difference between the two sides, putting his side 2-0 up at half-time and then killing off St Martin’s with his third after the visitors had pulled one back.
He had two coaches singing his praises afterwards.
‘I am really pleased for Craig. To score a hat-trick like that was excellent,’ said Mick Le Prevost.
Glyn Smith added that if Saints had had someone like Young to convert more of the several chances they created, they could easily have avoided defeat.
‘We did enough to get something from it, but it is all about strike rate,’ he said.
‘We played some decent football and created some good opportunities, but the finishing was poor today.
‘If we had had Craig Young up front, we might have had two or three more goals.’
The match was certainly more keenly contested that North’s three-goal victory margin might suggest.
Within the opening five minutes Craig Farnham’s lobbed volley drifted just wide after Dominic Heaume had charged down Richard Davey’s attempted clearance and then the North keeper made a fine save to push away Heaume’s header.
Simon Tostevin went close at the other end, rising above Kevin Graham to meet Glyn Dyer’s corner, before the hosts took the lead on 12min.
Miles Pengelley, deployed in central midfield by Le Prevost for a change, slipped a delightful pass through to Young, who had made a run between the two centre backs, and he took the ball beautifully in his stride and confidently beat Nathan Pattimore.
‘Miles is full of beans, runs everywhere and I have said to him that I think he can learn the game better playing in central midfield than he can at right back,’ explained the North coach.
Davey maintained the lead with another good stop, this time from Ben Coulter, before Heaume did not realise how much time he had in the box as he attempted to flick a backward header towards goal.
On the half-hour Young made Saints pay for those misses.
The finish was a carbon copy of his first after Dyer had released him following Graham’s slip on halfway.
Still, though, Saints pressed forward and created openings.
Farnham, who proved a willing front man all afternoon, again worked Davey while Heaume misdirected his header when left unmarked from Chris Mauger’s corner.
Fifteen minutes after the turnaround, the black-and-whites finally got the breakthrough they deserved.
Heaume had broken into the box and cut inside two sliding defenders before teeing up Farnham, whose first shot was parried by Davey and his second blocked on the line. Heaume, though, made it third time lucky, nodding home the loose ball from close range.
Coulter and Farnham both had chances to equalise, the former sending his shot just wide and the latter denied by Paul Page’s timely block, but it was not all one-way traffic.
Pattimore got a vital hand to the ball as Young attempted to dink it past him when through on goal and moments later the North No. 9 smacked the crossbar with a 20-yard free kick.
With 10 minutes remaining and six minutes after the welcome return to Priaulx football of Alex Le Prevost as a substitute, Young completed his hat-trick to make the points safe.
Dyer’s cross from the left looped off Graham’s head and Tostevin challenged Pattimore for the loose ball 10 yards out.
It bounced out to Young who headed it back over the crowded area and into the empty net.
In a frantic closing, Le Prevost hit the bar with a header while Jason Winch somehow missed from a couple of yards out before Tostevin added North’s fourth with a far-from-sweet volley that bounced past the despairing Pattimore.
‘I said before the game that we needed to put on a performance better than last week and the boys responded very well,’ Mick Le Prevost said.
‘Richard Davey made some excellent saves early on, all the boys worked hard and it paid off.
‘We want to win the rest of our games because we really want a Wheway Cup place,’ he added.
Smith said: ‘Not taking our chances has been the story of our games this season. But we played better today than we have in our last two or three games, so that is a positive to take from this one.’
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