Tuesday evening saw another fantastic and exhilarating FA Youth Cup game under the lights at the Medical Travel Compared Stadium in front of a crowd of 320.

The visitors from Carshalton started on the front foot with a game plan to stop our young Hillians playing their free flowing football. The 1st 20 mins saw Carshalton take the lead after the early pressure. This sparked the Hill into taking back control of the game and starting to find their rhythm resulting in a good move which led to Grey Coleman being brought down for a penalty which was firmly slotted home by Luca Oliva.

BH continued to control the possession while the opposition always looked dangerous on the counter with their very direct style of play and speed on the wings. Just before halftime a poor decision for a penalty was awarded to Carshalton by the referee after what everyone in the ground could obviously see was a great tackle by Charlie Bradley. Up stepped their captain only to see a brilliant save by Jake Rhodes who not only saved the penalty but made a double save of the rebound to keep the score going into the break at 1-1

The 2nd half saw much the same pattern with Carshalton sticking to the direct play against our possession based more fluid game. The visitors took the lead after a blatant foul on Johnson was left unpunished leading to their second goal. Once again our boys had to dig deep and show unbelievable character and determination to pick themselves up and go again.

Changes off the bench gave the team the energy they needed and a great move saw Jake King drive the ball forward to Ewan Wintle who squares the ball back for Oliva to calmly take a touch with defenders around him and fire home for his second of the night.

Going into the last half hour the young Hillians looked the likely team to get the winner which came after a corner from Coleman was fumbled by the Goalkeeper for Thomas Sekyere tapped in the winner sending the boys into the hat for the 1st round proper.

Berty Oliva & Ross Johnson said after the game “We couldn’t be more proud of the group tonight. Carshalton came here with a game plan that the boys had to adapt too. Our boys did this brilliantly and showed great togetherness, bravery and determination to keep doing the right things and never giving up. Every player gave everything and deservedly got themselves into the next round after a cracking game. We would like to thank all the Hillian supporters for their amazing support and pushing the team on!”.