Team: Sam Cowler, Michael Harriman (booked), Tony Sanderson, Michael Doughty (booked & replaced by I think Jordan Walker), Stephen O’Donnell, Taylor Parmenter, Sam Bewick, Frankie Sutherland, Mo Sharif, Marcel Henry-Francis (replaced by Bruno Andrade),Bagasan Graham.
This was a straight forward 5-1 win for Steve Gallen’s U18’s side at the idyllic setting of Bisham Abbey on a bright morning with Rangers 4-0 up after only 25 minutes.
The match kicked off at 11.05am and right from the start, Rangers took the game to the home side. After 12 minutes, a penalty was awarded to the visitors with the referee informing the Wanderers player who conceded the penalty: “I’ll give you another card on top of that one if you want me to”, due to his dissent. Michael Doughty tucked the ball away to make it 1-0.
Rangers then started to run away with the game. A Mo Sharif hat-trick was scored with goals in the 16th, 21st and 25thminutes. Generally they were good efforts, although the first looked like it had been intended as a cross. The second one was a well taken header. After Sharif’s first two goals, one of the referee’s assistants at long last arrived after being stuck in traffic. One of the Wycombe youngsters had been doing a decent job of substituting for him until that point in the game. A couple of minutes later, Sharif got his third goal with a great shot from the edge of the box.
Wycombe were now reeling with less than a third of the match played. The gap between the two sides was significant, despite Wycombe being third in the table to Rangers top of the table ranking. The home side were given a chance to reduce the deficit on 30 minutes with a penalty awarded against Rangers. Oliver Taylor scored, giving Sam Cowler in the Rangers goal no chance of saving the kick, by putting it low to the keeper’s left.
The rest of the half was pretty even, but in the second, Rangers took their foot off the gas and had relatively few chances until eventually Michael Doughty scored his second goal and Rangers fifth to end the scoring on 81 minutes.
The Rangers team looked very solid and clearly Steve Gallen has formed a very decent side. One of the stand-out players however was playing for Wycombe. Their captain, Jesse Kewley-Graham (complete with Gareth Ainsworth style hair band) looked a very useful midfielder, although he was the only Wycombe player to stand out with Rangers a cut above their opposition in almost all departments. So the day started well and got even better with the First Team winning 1-0 later the same afternoon at Doncaster Rovers.
Here are the two penalty goals from the game – the opening goal from QPR via a penalty on 12 minutes and Wycombe’s penalty on 30 minutes to make the score 4-1:
Wycombe U 18’s Vs Queen’s Park Rangers U18’s
Wycombe U 18’s Vs Queen’s Park Rangers U18’s
A selection of match photos can be found at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=349080&id=615338082&l=26feb8a814
Thanks to Paul Davidson and Ken Graham (Bagasan’s father) for their assistance with some of the information used to put this report together.
Martin Percival