Warrington entertained Bridgefield B on Wednesday night on the back of 3 straight wins. With a very strong squad assembled it was looking good for Warrington as Bridgefield appeared to have quite a young team and only one sub. Tom Costello was captain for the night and I don’t know if he won or lost the coin toss but the teams had to switch and Warrington attacked the deep end 1st. It proved to be a shrewd move by Tom as Warrington came out 8-0 winners in the first quarter. Four goals from Tom Hadley, two from Addison and two from Samir.
The second quarter was not good from Warrington and attacking the deep end Bridgefield came out 1-3 winners to take the score to 9-3 to Warrington. This was despite the experienced Neil Musgrove showing the young lads how to defend with an excellent steal in the deep end showing he can still mix it with the best of them. Some harsh words from caretaker manager Ian Musgrove at half time saw the team come out firing again for the third. Warrington won this quarter 7-1 including a hatrick from Rafik and an especially pleasing well worked man up goal. Conor Dean got on the score sheet and Addison and Tom Hadley also added to their tallies.
The third quarter also saw Peter Burke come out of goals and after creating some space in the deep end he clearly had a rush of blood to the head being so far from the safety of his goal posts and fluffed his best chance of scoring so far this year. Peter was indeed excellent in goals, as always, pulling off some fine saves and distributing really well to start the Warrington attacks.
The last quarter was not to be a repeat of the second and Warrington defended much better and worked some good opportunities in attack. Sam Cooper stepped up with 2 goals, including a shallow end lob. Then with seconds on the clock Addison fired an outrageous long range effort into the shallow end goal. He is clearly desperate to keep pace with Tom Hadley in the top scorer chart, having missed a game last week. Contender for goal of the season it may be but still only worth one in the top scorer chart. Tim Mainwaring is improving with each game and had a good game. Similarly Tom Costello equited himself well and played some good polo. James Barker fresh from GB duty in Malta had a solid game but unfortunately did not add to his goal tally. Andy Burke was again the linchpin of the Warrington defence, likened (by himself mostly) to an in form Vincent Kompany. This was another excellent team performance from one of the best Warrington sides assembled in recent years. Let’s hope we can get a similar team out to face Birkenhead on Monday as they will be close rivals come the end of the season. Credit must also go to Bridgefield whose young players worked and scored some excellent goals and showed real promise for the future. I imagine the reverse fixture will see the return of some of their more senior players and an even sterner test for Warrington.
Team: P Burke, T Hadley (7), J Barker, T Costello, R Tahraoui (3), C Dean (1), A Burke, S Tahraoui (2), T Mainwaring, S Cooper (2), N Musgrove, A Brown (6).