Blackpool Men’s first team made hard work of their match against Urmston at Stanley Park, but eventually ran out 6-4 winners.
With selection headaches throughout the club due to a lack of availability and injuries, a re-hashed side dominated the early stages of the game cruising to a 4-0 lead. Simon Thomas opened the scoring with a neat finish after stealing the ball from an Urmston defender and linking up with Ian Swaine and Dave Morgan. Morgan doubled the lead with a diving finish after James Slater made a powerful run down the right flank. Blackpool’s third came from a slick penalty corner again involving Morgan and Slater with the finish coming from Rob Dingle. Ian Swaine also found himself on the scoresheet with a tidy finish, and Blackpool were in cruise control. However two defensive errors from the home side gifted Urmston a goal and a penalty corner which was converted to give them a glimmer of hope going into half time.
The second half brought a change of tactics from Urmston as they tried to stretch the Blackpool defence by leaving two high forwards and adopting a long-ball game. This appeared to be paying off when Urmston cut the lead to just a single goal when Blackpool failed to stop a direct strike from a penalty corner with 20 minutes left to play. Captain Nick Rainbow shuffled his players around with immediate impact as Blackpool re-gained their two goal advantage. A quickly taken free hit from Dingle found Morgan in space, whose weighted ball was inch prefect for the run of David Wright who wrong footed the keeper to score on his return to the first team. Morgan capped off his man of the match performance with a brilliant individual goal where he picked the ball up on the halfway line, beat 3 Urmston defenders and then his reverse stick shot had too much for the goal keeper, to make it six.
Urmston rallied for a late consolation goal from a well worked deflection, but it was too little too late and a very relieved Blackpool picked up the three points.