West Auckland Town v Bishop Auckland

Recap

Bishop Auckland: Catterick, Eckley-Aldsworth, Robertson, May, Brown, Hodgson, Bartliff, Fielding, Johnson, Tymon (Greaves), Holdsworth

West Auckland: Liversedge, Hegarty, Hope, Cocks, Brown, Potter, Mitchell, Wood, Scott, Hume, Harrison

Bishops knocked neighbours ‘West’ out of the FA Cup for a second successive season with a surprisingly comfortable win and performance in front of a crowd of just under 500.

The new look two blues – who kick off their Northern Premier League season next week – featured no less than five debutants, and following an opening 25 minutes that were largely incident-free Holdsworth created some space to turn and call Liversedge into action.

Ten minutes before the break, Johnson was released. The diminutive forward stepped inside and curled a precise finish past Liversedge to the delight of the Bishops fans making up most of the crowd behind the home keepers’ goal.  Johnson was then denied by Liversedge minutes later as his effort was palmed to safety.

Johnson was the danger man again at the start of the second half and after again being thwarted by Liversedge Aldsworth combined with Holdsworth for the debutant attacker to glance in a header.  The home-side task became much more difficult when Hume was given a straight red for a late tackle just short of the hour mark.

‘West’ could only count a timid long-range effort that Catterick easily gathered as any meaningful effort on goal as Bishops dominated the game for the remainder of the cup tie.

Johnson drove into the box but Liversedge and a defender blocked his path to goal a couple of other chances were created as Bishops knocked the ball around at will and as the full-time whistle was blown Bishops had to settle for the two-nil scoreline which set up another away tie at Ashington in the Preliminary Round on August 17th.