Northerners 9, Centrals 1

MICK LE PREVOST can breathe a sigh of relief.

His bare XI came through a potentially tricky night unscathed yesterday at Northfield, both in terms of their cup ambitions as well as their injury list.

North were forced to employ reserve goalkeeper Will Woodford at right back and had no substitutes to call upon, but still had far too much class for plucky second division outfit Centrals. ‘We did the squad of 20 for this competition in August and of those 20, I had nine missing tonight,’ said Le Prevost (pictured).

‘I was just praying that we did not lose anyone tonight.

‘But, in the end, it was a good workout for the players.

‘The boys need some football – you can see that. We scored some good goals, but we still have to do better in front of goal because we wasted a lot of chances.

‘At half-time I said we should treat the second half like a training session and we did look to move the ball around.’