15/11/2025
Match Report - Full Time 2-2 (2-4 FDC win on penalties)
Today Newport IOW FDC U14s travelled away to Gosport Borough in the JPL Trophy cup. Now at the knockout stages, FDC knew they needed a result to continue their cup run. Today’s fixture was played at the recently renovated Privett Park, now known as the AEI stadium.
As a typical cup game, the initial period was mostly a deadlock, with both defences keeping opportunities on goal limited. 24 minutes in to the first half, Drew was played in by Finners on the edge of the box, Drew slipped Lewis in down the wing who played a well executed cutback cross to Jackson on the edge of the 6 yard box. Jackson calmly slotted the ball home to take the lead.
5 minutes later, Gosport played down the left wing and after the cross wasn’t cleared, it fell to one of their players, just inside the box, who hit a sweet left footed shot to make it 1-1.
We went in to half time level with nothing splitting the 2 teams, who battled well across the pitch.
Second half saw both teams working hard to limit opportunities on goal. 20 minutes into the half, FDC won a corner, after Leo had his shot tipped over the bar. Finners stepped up and put a pinpoint cross into the near post, where Jackson executed a fantastic flicked on header to take the lead again.
Only holding on to the lead for 3 minutes, Gosport picked up the ball 15 yards outside of our box after an ‘Archie deflected’ clearance fell short and lobbed the ball in to the net to make it 2-2.
The game ended as a draw and penalties would decide the outright winners of today’s game.
Gosport stepped up to take the first pen and Archie pulled off a good save to give us the immediate advantage on the penalty shootout.
Drew stepped up and calmly scored his penalty in the bottom right corner to give us the lead in the shootout. Gosport scored their next penalty and Jackson was up next, who again slotted the ball home in the bottom left. Now 2-1 up in the penalties the pressure was on Gosport. Their 3rd penalty taker scored levelling up the score. With a penalty in hand, Charlie stepped up and again slotted the ball home, bottom left, to retain the advantage at 3-2. Gosport’s next penalty taker narrowly shot above the crossbar to give us a theoretical 2 goal advantage. Up steps Harry O, knowing that scoring his penalty would take FDC in to the next round, he stepped up with great composure slotted it down the keeper’s left to take the victory and put FDC into the next round of the cup.
