Blues Beat Invicta To Lift The Sid Burvill Trophy

By Reece Hibbird

In our penultimate pre-season friendly, we travelled to Folkestone Invicta to play for the Sid Burvill Trophy!

The first chance of the match came just shy of the five-minute mark, as Greenhalgh and Hatfull work the play down the right-hand side. Hatfull subtly sets the ball back to Ben, who produces a cross that almost caught Henly off guard and was whiskers away from finding the top left-hand corner of the Invicta net.

Almost instantly, Invicta have a chance of their own, as Kouassi gets past Greenhalgh, and has two bites of the cherry, but both were blocked.

Fast forward to 25 minutes in, Bessey had the ball on the right flank and he set Harvey Brand to deliver a first time low cross across the face of goal with the ball begging to be connected with, but Franzen-Jones just couldn’t stretch far enough to meet it.

The 31-minute mark saw a great chance for Folkestone, again with Kouassi playing the key role, and trying to bend it in the right-hand side, however Wray ensured the ball stayed out of the ‘Gate net.

Folkestone were on top for the next few minutes, as shortly after trialist 17 for the Seasiders danced through Margate but his shot was saved by Wray in between the sticks.

The last chance of the half for either side fell to the feet of Jordon Ababio, who attempted to show the Gate fans why they should be excited by his arrival, as he picked the ball up from Wray, and started to put the burners on before being halted by Young, earning him a place in the referees’ book.

The second half saw both sides unable to cause their counterparts any real problems initially, until the 62nd minute, where trialist 8 gets his shot blocked and cleared only as far as Young, who’s shot was parried away by Wray.

68 minutes in and we saw the biggest chance of the game. Bessey Saldanha feeds the ball effortlessly between the back line to the feet of Franzen-Jones but couldn’t get his shot right as the ball trickled wide.

two minutes later we saw Greenhalgh standing over a free kick about 25 yards out, and it looked to be dipping in under the bar with Henly worried, but it went over the bar.

The last real chance came in the 89th minute, as trialist 18 for Invicta worked it well down the right, delivering a ball into the box with Smith unable to get any real conviction on his touch and it’s dealt with by Margate.

Penalties followed the full-time whistle and The ‘Gate would score all five with Harry Hudson scoring the winning spot kick!

Margate XI: 1. Tom Wray, 2. Harrison Hatfull, 3. Ross Craig (Trialist A 70’), 4. Harvey Brand, 6. Harry Hudson ©, 7. Jordon Ababio (Fyn Rutherford 70’), 9. Lukas Franzen-Jones, 11. Ben Greenhalgh, 12. Lewis Knight (Tyrone Sterling 70’), 14. Brandon Davey, 20. James Bessey-Saldanha.

Unused subs: Reece Hobbs (GK), Loui Hoxha.

Margate Media Player Of The Match: Tom Wray.

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