A Robbie Spence wonder goal took Team Northumbria through to the second round of the Northumberland Senior Cup.
Spence’s goal made all the difference as TN secured a 2-1 victory over Heaton Stannington at Coach Lane.
The hosts had a number of chances to go ahead in the first half but it wasn’t until late in the second that a penalty, confidently slotted away by Ben Dibb-Fuller, put TN ahead 1-0 before Spence’s thunderbolt made it 2-0.
The Stan pulled one back at the death, leaving TN manager Colin Stromsoy frustrated his side weren’t further ahead.
“The most important thing in any cup game is that you go through and we’ve done that,” said Stromsoy.
“Some of our build up play and our creative play was fantastic, but we created numerous chances in the first half that we should have scored.
“If we want to be a much better team, go up the league, go a distance in this cup and do well in the BUCS then finishing is the aspect of our performances that has to significantly improve.
“We’re defending almost as well as we did last season. We work very hard defensively and statistically we’ve always been one of the best teams in all of the Northern League at it.
“Last season we were scoring a lot more goal but this year we’re playing teams that are much better at the back which is fair enough but we’re not scoring anywhere near – we’re scoring about a third of the goals we were scoring last year – that’s got to improve.
“We scored a penalty and Robbie has probably scored one of the best individual goals I’ve ever seen at Coach Lane which has ultimately taken us through - he scored that goal but we missed four one-on-ones. That’s the bugger issue.”
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