THE 1874 COLUMN - A different perspective with Matt Waters

1874 extended their winning run over Witton to three games as the side from the North West Counties Premier Division secured a penalty shootout victory against Albion of the BetVictor Premier.

The game itself was an extremely even affair across the 90 minutes with Witton dominating the first half and deserved their 2-0 lead at the interval.

The second half, however, 1874 created chance after chance, putting Witton under great pressure until finally breaking through the Albion defence making it 2-1 thanks to an own goal.

It didn’t stop there, with more and more pressure, 1874 managed to score a late equaliser when Scott McGowan finished from inside the six-yard box to take it to penalties.

After Tony Aghayere made three saves in the shootout, 1874 ran out winners in the end, showing huge character and determination to not only come back from 2-0 down but to eventually gain our first ever penalty shootout win in a game of such magnitude.

Aghayere described the win as “The best feeling ever.”

He added: “ It’s brilliant. It’s a massive game and derby for us and we played really well and we want to win this competition.

“During the second half we played some really good football. We know we didn’t play too well in the first half but I’m so happy that we got the equaliser and in the end deserved the win.”

Co manager Wayne Goodison echoed those comments.

He said: “At half time we felt we hadn’t done ourselves justice. Obviously they’re a good team and deserved to be in the lead.

“In the second half we knew we had to show some character and play our own game and we did that.

“We did nothing necessarily clever, we just did what we are good at. We’ve got some excellent players so once they worked out after half time what we needed to do, they were always going to keep playing and in the end it got us the result.”

With that win last Tuesday extending our unbeaten run to seven games, we next play on Saturay away from home against struggling league opposition Litherland REMCYA.