Northumbria Men’s 4th 7-3 Sunderland Men’s 3rd
A dominant first half display was enough in seeing Northumbria run out convincing winners, despite a stronger second half showing from the visitors.
The first chance of the game fell to Sunderland after Reiss Elliot had the first shot on target two minutes in as his low strike was easily gathered by Northumbria’s goalkeeper.
It was one way traffic from that point on after the hosts missed several good opportunities, before they broke the deadlock eight minutes into the first half after their striker latched onto a defence splitting through ball and fired it past Luca Killich.
Northumbria kept up their offensive dominance and doubled their lead after a great ball was fired into their left winger who’s first touch drove him into the space between Daniel Lee and Cameron Abernethy, then clinically finished the move off with his curling effort.
On the half hour mark Northumbria scored their third after Pierre Youssef was dispossessed leading to Sunderland being punished again from a searching through ball.
Five minutes later the hosts went four goals up from the best move of the game which included some slick one touch football and was finished off by a simple tap in from the middle of the box.
The second half then started off in the same manner in which the first half had played out with Northumbria dominating the ball and shots on goal.
Sunderland began to show more of a threat in front of goal as the half drew on, with Khaleel’s fine piece of footwork and finish saw him pull one back for the visitors.
The hosts then responded brilliantly as they scored two more goals of their own with a couple of close-range efforts.
With eight minutes left of the game Valentine Enwela grabbed Sunderland’s second after some good hold up play from Khaleel, leaving Enwela with only the keeper to beat.
Elisha Ajayi then capped off a great performance with his long-range effort swerving past the Northumbrian goalkeeper, then two minutes later and with the final kick of the game the hosts got their seventh from a lower scuffed effort.
