Guisborough Town 2, Sunderland RCA 0 (Northern League – Division One)

AN all-round much improved performance earned Guisborough Town a thoroughly deserved 2-0 first victory of the new Northern League season over Sunderland RCA at the KGV last week. Two goals in either half from Guisborough’s hard-working centre forward Louis Johnson were enough to seal a fully merited win and, more importantly, the first points on the board for the Priorymen.

Every player in the young Guisborough team played their part in overcoming the Sunderland RCA side.

After the game Guisborough manager Steve Bell said: “I am absolutely delighted with the performance by the boys. There were significant improvements in all areas of our game and I was particularly impressed with the tenacity and fitness of what essentially is a very young side, with the average age being only around the 23/24 mark. But for our veteran ‘keeper Robbie Dean, that average age would have been in the late teens.”

The Priorymen progressed in the FA Cup on Saturday with a 2-1 win away at Penrith.

The earliest chance of the game came for Guisborough, when Ben Jackson fired over the bar after eight minutes. Shortly afterwards, at the other end of the pitch, Guisborough ‘keeper Robbie Dean prevented Penrith from opening the scoring with a quality one-on-one save. In the 21st minute, Guisborough were forced into an early substitution, with Lucas Bell being replaced by Gary Redman. Robbie Dean was once again Guisborough’s saviour towards the end of the first half, as he produced another point-blank save to keep the scores level going into half time.

The Priorymen came flying out of the blocks in the second half, and it was summer signing Brad Plant who opened the scoring after cleverly rounding the Penrith goalkeeper and slotting home in the 47th minute for 1-0 to Guisborough.

Guisborough’s lead was doubled just five minutes later, when Louis Johnson was taken down in the box, and he converted his second spot kick in two games to give the Priorymen a comfortable 2-0 lead with about 40 minutes left to play.

They almost managed to keep a clean sheet, until Penrith’s Connor Shields broke through the Priorymen’s defence and slotted home for the hosts on the 84th minute.

Bell was impressed by his side’s resilience after a below-par first half. “I started the game by telling them to continue on from Wednesday night against Sunderland RCA, and to do exactly what we did in that game," he said. "But in the first half they did the exact opposite of that. It was, slow, methodical and flat. I felt that at times we were trying to be a five-a-side team. We were really poor.

“I really got into them at half time, gave them a few home truths and to the players’ credit, they took it on the chin. Sometimes when you give players real honesty, they don’t like it, but these lads agreed with everything that was said. We came out in the second half and absolutely dominated the game of football, and to be honest, the game should have been out of sight for us before they got their goal back with six minutes to go."

Guisborough Town face the daunting task of meeting North Shields in the next round of the FA Cup.