Story courtesy of Northern NSW Football.
South Cardiff Gunners 4 (Sam Ford 2, Hakan Canli, Ethan Spiers) def. Wallsend 2 (Ty Goldsmith 2)
Sunday 10th March, 5:30 pm, Ulinga Oval
The first leg of the Gallagher Shield kicked off with South Cardiff playing home to Wallsend in another thrilling encounter to start the regular season.
The Red Devils got off to a fine start, with striker Ty Goldsmith scoring in the opening minute.
South Cardiff soon settled into the game and began to create chances and were ruthless in front of goal, notching four first-half goals to storm into the lead.
New recruit, Sam Ford, began his campaign with two goals, while fellow signing Hakan Canli and Ethan Spiers also got on the scoresheet.
A late Ty Goldsmith goal gave the Red Devils a slight chance of a comeback but it wasn’t to be as South Cardiff wrapped up the win and the advantage in the Gallagher Shield.
Captain-Coach, Denis Fajkovic, served his one-game suspension from the sideline and said he’s pleased with his side’s resilience to overcome a tough start to the game.
“Bit of a shaky start, but we talked about being patient as we’ve got the quality,” Fajkovic said.
“First half we played really well and the experience showed, disappointing second half but a lot of positives and it was really important to get that win and get the ball rolling for us.”
New signing, Dino Fajkovic was also making his debut and showed his quality in the impressive victory.
“The boys have only played one or two games together so the best is yet to come but we definitely want to push ourselves this year,” Fajkovic continued.
Wallsend were missing new defender Michael Wright due to suspension and coach Jesse Pryce says the first half wasn’t what they wanted.
“The formation wasn’t working too well in the first half, we had to make some changes and come out with a better attitude in the second half which I thought we did,” Pryce said.
“We gifted them a few goals and we had some injuries in the warm-up but we don’t want to make excuses and we’ll be raring to go for Round Two now.”