Newcastle Benfield vs Ashington

This was the first league game of the season for the champions against Ashington who always give Benfield a tough game and it could have been a disastrous start as early as the first minute when Keith Douglas was put clean thru but he put his lob shot over the crossbar.

The game continued on a pretty even level but it was again the visitors who were unlucky not to score when a twenty-five yard shot from Andrew Johnson crashed against the post with Andrew Grainger well beaten .

The home team then got started and had two opportunity's to open the scoring firstly Michael Chilton who had not had the best of pre season training due to holidays and injuries took an extra touch before hitting his shot and David Rayner made a brilliant block tackle to save his team from going one goal down and it was then the turn of goalkeeper Karl Dryden to save well from Alec Henderson who five minutes later had to leave the field thru injury with Andrew McIntosh replacing him.

The score at halftime was 0-0 but within 3 minutes of the second half the home team took the lead when a good build up and a great pass from Paul Antony saw substitute Andrew McIntosh hit the ball first time beating the goalkeeper at the near post to make it 1-0.

As the game progressed it looked like only one team was going to score again and it was not Ashington who looked weak in attack but in saying this in the sixty-seventh minute Mark Minto was denied a goal when a great save by Grainger saw the home team retain the one goal advantage.

There were appeals from Ashington with 10 minutes left for a penalty and the referee pointed to the arm when he meant to wave ball to hand but this infuriated the Ashington Supporters who let the ref know what they thought of him then and also at full time.

The game was played out with the only chance being in the eighty-eighth minute when Dryden saved well from McIntosh after good play by Rowantree the final whistle went with Benfield winning 1-0.

MOM… Alu Bangura

Reporter: Alan Young