Eight Bells beat Celtic
Jackson Anderson Accountants Spennymoor Sunday League
BELVEDERE booked their first-ever final with an 8-4 win over Horndale Celtic in the semi-finals of the Kelvin McIntosh Division Two Cup.
The league’s fixture programme took a hammering as only three games were played out of the scheduled 12.
But both Division Two Cup semi-final games went ahead as Belvedere beat Celtic, and Quinns beat Green Tree 2-1 after extra-time in the other.
Celtic were making a fight of it after Graham Carling cancelled out Lee Nixon’s opening goal.
But Jonathan Millward scored before the break to make it 2-1 at half-time, and Nixon added two quick goals to make it 4-1 soon after.
Paul Hughes pulled one back, but Belvedere raced into an 8-2 lead with goals by Paul Gargett, Nixon, David Brown and Millward again. Hughes and Carling grabbed two consolation goals for Celtic.
Belvedere manager Karl Thompson said: “They never gave up fighting and it was quite a good game for that reason. They created quite a lot of chances, we just created more and scored them when they came along.
“But they’re a newly-formed side and they were a good set-up, it was a shame there had to be a losing team after such a well played game.”
Meanwhile, high-flying Quinns needed extra-time to make their passage to the final with a 2-1 win over Green Tree in the other semi - see the latest Game of the Week feature for more details and action pictures.
In the only other fixture to survive the frost last week, Southerne Club recorded their fifth win of the season in Division Two with a 4-2 home win over George & Dragon.
The George took the lead through Ian Fairless before Lee Redpath equalised for the Southerne, and then Alan Stewart put them 2-1 up before the break.
George came back into it after the re-start and drew level through Wayne Pratt, but suffered two second-half injuries, and Stewart grabbed his second and third goals in the last 20 minutes as George tired.
“It wasn’t our best performance,” admitted Southerne Secretary Brian Redpath. “I wasn’t very happy with us generally. It was a close game in difficult conditions but I don’t think we played particularly well.”
George boss Ronnie Hewitson said: “We played some decent stuff and were a bit unlucky, but our goalkeeper has gone off and I’ve had to use our subs before we suffered another injury. Up until then we were holding our own. In fact, we were probably marginally the better side in the first half. But we can’t really blame injuries, there’s no excuse for defeat. Our biggest problem has been not being able to field the same starting eleven every week.”
• The next league meeting will take place at Belvedere WMC on Wednesday 22nd March from 8pm.
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