Story courtesy of Northern NSW Football
Cessnock City Hornets vs. Wallsend FC
Saturday 7th March, 2:30 pm
Turner Park
This week’s match-up between Cessnock City and Wallsend has all the makings of a great, exciting clash.
Both teams sit on the exact same points, have shown impressively strong starts to their 2018 campaigns and with emotions and ambitions buzzing around the clubs due to their sensational form, neither team will want that to come to an abrupt end.
On one side of the field, the Hornets pose one of the best defensive records, only conceding one goal, and have looked very well organised at the back with the likes of Greg Anderson and Josh Dwyer.
While on the other side, the Red Devils have flourished offensively and pose the best goalscoring record, eight goals in just three games, due to the efforts of Ty Goldsmith, Matt Williams and Sam Bradshaw.
Ben Edwards, coach of Wallsend, suggested that if his offence can continue striving as they have done in the first three games, then they will be hard to stop this weekend and although their defence has been rather weak, he’s confident it will sort itself out.
“We played them [Cessnock] in the Heritage Cup…and I’m expecting a lot more goals than there were in that game.”
“I am confident they [the attack] can score against any team in this league.”
“Our defence is a work in progress.”
“It’s a fairly new backline working together but hopefully in the next couple of weeks they can get it together and we can start scoring and not conceding so much.”
Cessnock City coach Brendan Slade admitted he was well aware of Wallsend’s attacking prowess but was confident his solid defence is up to the task of containing them.
“We’ve just got to keep the ball away from their dangerous players as much as we can.
“We just can’t let them get in dangerous positions. If we do, we have to shut them down pretty quickly. It’s as simple as that.”