County Cup ends with injury time winner for Rayleigh

The Essex County Cup u13 cup final was played at Great Wakering Rovers.
City started with a 4-2-3-1 formation, Cam in goal, with a strong back four of Max, Luke, Hayden and George with Tennie and Billy in Midfield with Joel, James and Sam wide and behind Callum upfont.

City looked most assured in the early stages and easily cleared any Rayleigh attacks. After 10 mins a ball was played into the Rayleigh box and the ball was played back to Tennie whose shot from outside the box beat the tall keeper as it just crept under the bar. 1-0.

City looked the stronger team in the first half and with a change on about 25 mins where Ed replaced Joel looked in control. 1-0 H/time.

Rayleigh came out of the changing rooms from halftime the stronger, but it was City who doubled there lead when a Tennie freekick was well headed in by Hayden. 2-0

Rayleigh knew they needed to attack and changed formation to move 3 players into attack and introduced a new sub wide left. They were denied a goal by a superb save by Cam in goal who saved well to his low right hand side.

But Rayleigh kept coming and there was nothing that Cam could do to keep out a Rayleigh shot that took a big deflection and end in th near corner as he looked to make another save to the far corner. 2-1
The momentum was with Rayleigh and with 10mins to go equalised via the winger who cut back from the by line to score. 2-2.

Joel and Kyran replaced Ed and James, and soon afterwards the extremely hard working Billy was replaced by Reece and after a head injury Max was replaced by Gabe.
With extra time looming Rayleigh broke away and managed to find the substitute on the back post who was easily able to score.2-3. 2 mins into injury time is a great time for a team to take the lead. No time for City to respond and 30 seconds later the ref blew his final whistle, and the County cup was going back to Rayleigh.

The first half was Citys, the second Rayleighs. With hardly anything splitting the teams over the whole match. Tennie, Billy and Hayden had really good cup
finals, and left nothing on the pitch. Well done to Rayleigh who came back from 2 down to win the Essex County Cup.
Back to league action on Sunday for the penultimate game of the season.

Report from Essex Fa here
http://www.essexfa.com/news/2015/mar/chelmsford-city-2-3-rayleigh-boys