Windscale 2 South Shields 5

A YOUTHFUL looking South Shields side came to Windscale and ran the home side ragged for large parts of this Wearside League game.

The early stages were full of quick passing and moving but the only effort on goal was was a header from Huck that cleared the bar.

Then, in the 23rd minute, Andy Hunter in Shields’ goal made a mess of a back pass on the edge of his area and Jordan Livingstone stole the ball from him and rolled it into the empty net for 1-0.

The lead lasted eight minutes as Ewan Simpson ran clear and fired a shot in that James Dolan did well to parry but the rebound went to Nathan Sinclair whose miss-hit effort went straight across goal back to the fortunate Simpson for a tap in for 1-1.

Dolan then made two excellent saves to prevent Shields taking the lead and the score remained level at the break.

With Windscale looking a bit more comfortable after the interval, Dolan played a ball out intended for Walker but it went straight to Frankie Huck who calmly lobbed the ball back over his head to give Shields the lead with 55 minutes gone.

This spurred the home side into their best spell of the game and, just after a big penalty shout for handball, Matt Metcalf let fly from 25 yards only to see Hunter palm it away at full stretch.

Then, after 70 minutes, Shields broke away and won a free-kick wide on the right and, as the ball was played in low, Sinclair was first to react to knock the ball in for 1-3. Four minutes later, it was 1-4 with Huck curling in a cracker of a free kick from the corner of the box.

Less than a minute later and Darren Donald ran into the Shields’ penalty area and set up Livingstone for his second goal to pull it back to 2-4.

But that was as good as it got for Windscale and, to round things off, sub Matt Davidson got on the end of another low cross from the right to poach his side’s fifth goal with only minutes remaining, final score 2-5.

Cleator Moor Celtic 3 Richmond Town 1

CLEATOR Moor Celtic set off like a steam train as Richmond Town were the visitors at McGrath Park.

The deadlock was finally broken on 34 minutes when Callum Birdsall fired the ball home.

Birdsall got his second after good work from Leigh Dunn and Luke Close.

Celtic looked comfortable and had a number of chances that went astray but, with 10 minutes to go, they made it 3-0 as Josh Charlton played in Jay Weatherill who thumped the ball into the back of the net. Richmond’s Scott Ryan hit a late consolation but the day belonged to Celtic, due to host Stokesley last night before Redcar visit in the Shipowners Cup semi-final on Saturday, kick-off 2pm.