Damage in the Box!: DEEPING RANGERS (Outgang Road)

After a Saturday sabbatical last weekend to celebrate the marriage of two of my good friends, congratulations once again to Mr & Mrs B, it was back to the hopping and back on the road to Wembley.

Destination this week was Market Deeping on the Lincolnshire/Cambridgeshire border. Like the last time, I had the pleasure of being chauffeured so I was able to partake in a couple of pints of the Woodforde's Wherry that was on sale in the clubhouse.

The tie pitted United Counties League (step 5) side Deeping Rangers against Northern Premier Division One South (step 4) side Leek Town. This was the first time ever Deeping had made it this far in the cup and had knocked out higher ranked opposition, Belper Town and New Mills, in doing so.

It was therefore well within the realms of possibility that an upset could be on the cards, but Leek Town have made a decent start to their campaign, having lost just once so far. Something had to give today.

Rangers had most of the play but once Matt Haddrell had tapped in Leek's opener after 13 minutes, following a goalkeeping blunder, the result was never in doubt. Deeping kept Danny Roberts busy, but the majority of it was bread and butter for the Leek custodian. The homesters two best efforts came from Matt Heron and Mark Jones, but Roberts made two fine saves.

The tie was eventually put to bed after 77 minutes when Devon Gibson scored with a looping header. Deeping could consider themselves unfortunate but The Blues did a professional job to go into the hat for the next round. It was nice to see a game with a fair referee, tackling allowed and no diving players!

The ground was neat and tidy, as befitting this part of the world and, as the plaque said on the wall outside, the turnstiles came from the old Wembley. Perhaps they were the ones I walked through in 1995? Today was spent in the company of two well known groundhoppers, one of whom also does his own blog. It would be remiss of me not to give it a plug... http://laurencereade.wordpress.com/