Considering it’s a competition that nobody seems to take seriously any more, it ended up being a very eventful game! The hosts went in front on 16 minutes but were pegged back 9 minutes later when the keeper had a nightmare, horribly misjudging a Mark Truffas cross and fumbling it in to his own goal.
Sulay Ahmed then justifably saw red for the visitors for a bit of a wild challenge on the Blackpool centre back, before the numbers were evened up when the hosts had a man sent off for pulling back Jordan Cover in the area and denying a clear goalscoring opportunity. The referee initially looked to just be showing a yellow card, but a quick chat with the linesman saw it end up as a straight red. The goalkeeper more than made up for his earlier error though with a cracking save from Truffas’ resultant penalty, leaving the sides square at the break with a goal each and ten men each.
With such an even first half, you’d have got good odds on what followed in the second half, with Colls coasting at 4-1 up within thirteen minutes of the restart. 2-1 arrived only 6 minutes after the break when a handball on the line, albeit one oddly only worthy of a yellow card, saw Colls given a penalty that was duly dispatched by Jordan Cover. Cover then played a huge part in setting up the third goal three minutes later, rounding a couple of defenders and skipping an attempted ankle tap from the goalkeeper to lay it on a plate for James Kirby to tap the ball home. The win was completed still two minutes before the hour mark when, following on from an absolute screamer in the 4-3 league win at Nelson last Friday, Cover got his second of the night with an absolute rocket from the edge of the area that flew in to the top corner.
