Young City side successful against the Gas
EXETER CITY'S UNDER-18s continued their resurgence up the Youth Alliance South West Division league table with a 1-0 victory at Bristol Rovers on Saturday.The Pirates went into the match unbeaten this season, but the grit and determination displayed from Exeter meant Frank Rosenwald's goal was enough to separate the two sides.
City Under-18s coach, Lee Skyrme, believed his team performed the essentials well enough in an important away performance.
"It wasn't the best game to watch, but it was quite a solid away performance," he said. "We were good at the things that we needed to be."
The match proved to be a scrappy affair, with the visitors failing to retain the ball whilst in possession. Rovers found their opponents hard to break down, but they did create the best opportunities, but found Grecians goalkeeper Kavanagh Keadell in sublime form.
Whilst Keadell was performing magnificently well at one end of the pitch for Skyrme's side, Rosenwald gave the Gas problems at the other. City's attacking trio of Rosenwald, Archie Collins and Ben Seymour have been in fine form recently, and they caused havoc once again, testing the Bristol defence when they could.
The hosts continued to believe in their attacking play, and did manage to find some openings to breach the defence of their counterparts. Finally, they managed to beat Keadell in the Exeter goal, but the woodwork denied the Pirates on three separate occasions, the away side determined to keep a clean sheet.
But perhaps in the most significant thirty seconds of the match, the Devon side countered from the third of those unfortunate instances for the Pirates, and quickly they got the ball to Rosenwald, and the forward struck home to score the only goal of the game, giving his team all three points with a important victory.
Skyrme said: "Bristol Rovers may be coming away from the match thinking how they haven't got anything from the game, but sometimes when you dig in, you can get the results, which is what we've done here.
"We've got to look at our possession, but we were always in the match and we took our chance when it came. We've managed the game well.
"Kavanagh Keadell was very good in goal. He made a few vital saves to keep us level, and when you aren't playing well, it's good to know your goalkeeper is performing. I also thought Frank Rosenwald was one of our better players on the day. He always gave us an attacking threat, and got the goal we were after.
"The break in the schedule came at a bad time. We were playing well and on a roll, and the break showed how much of a disruption it gave us with the lack of fluency in our passing here."
Exeter City Under-18s: Kavanagh Keadell, Jordan Storey, Max Gillard, Nick Grimes, Kyle Egan, Cameron Hargreaves, Jamie Harkness, Scott Meritt, Frank Rosenwald, Ben Seymour, Archie Collins
Subs: Toby Down, Will Richards, Mustafa Rehemi, Max Smallcombe, Brandon Green