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South Jersey Soccer:
Match Report - US Open Cup Round 2, Ocean City Barons 4, LI Rough Riders 0

Thursday, June 30, 2005

By Paul O'Donnell
Ocean City Barons Correspondent

The PDL Ocean City Barons defeated the USL Div 2 LI Rough Riders tonight 4-0 in US Open Cup Round 2 action. Actually, a cleaner touch here or there and it might have been an even bigger surprise. The Barons played their best half of the season in the opening 45 in a solid effort and put their mark on the match even though the scoreline at the half was only 1-0.

The match began well for them, and the best chance in the early going fell to Adam Williamson whose strong drive forced a well executed kick save from Paul Grafer in the 11th minute. In the 17th Ruben Mingo's dangerous shot was well saved by Grafer.

In the meantime the Barons central defense tandem of Andy Tait and John Thompson was shutting down any attempts advanced by the Rough Riders. Their most threatening advance came from an overlapping run by Sura when he was put in by Moussa Sy and in the end nothing really dangerous came from that effort either. The Barons were a bit quicker getting to 50-50 balls and anything in the air even remotely threatening was headed out of danger by Thompson or Tait. The positional play all over the pitch by the Barons was first class as they played within themselves and under control especially the back line of Greenawalt, Tait, Thompson and Maher.

At the other end of the pitch the Barons were threatening goal much more often but the final touch escaped them time and time again. Until the 21st minute that is, when a strong run and dangerous cross by Williamson was deflected by Grafer's diving attempt to cut it off and the ball fell to Ruben Mingo who blasted it home for the opening goal.

The half ended with that 1-0 scoreline but the tone of the game would change dramatically in the 54th minute when Derrick Etienne was shown a red card for a foul on Tommy Greenawalt. Six minutes later Greenawalt himself would see yellow. Then, three minutes later LI's Bradley also saw red for bungling down Byron Carmichael in the box on a clear scoring opportunity and now Long Island were down to 9 men with 27 minutes to play. Tony Donatelli got Grafer to go to his left and buried the PK to the right side netting and it was 2-0 Barons.

Adam Williamson got his deserved goal in the 67th making it 3-0 Barons with the helper coming from Donatelli. Steve Wacker added another in the 70th off a fine cross from Ryan Heins and it was 4-0 Barons.

John Thompson was rewarded for his strong game with Man of the Match honors.

Honorable mention on this night has to go to Adam Williamson, Ryan Heins, Tony Donatelli, Ruben Mingo and Steve Wacker who all had fine games and significant contributions to this Barons Open Cup victory.

The Barons have now run off two shutouts in this year's Open Cup while scoring 7 goals of their own. With this win the Barons move on to Round 3 against the USL Div 1 leading team, the Richmond Kickers on July 13th in Richmond.


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