Squires Gate Reserves kicked off a new era for the club as they faced Portuguese side Academica at School Road.

The reserves were formed earlier this year and accepted into the Lancashire League alongside the likes of AFC Fylde and Workington. This fixture is the first for the reserves and the first time Squires Gate have hosted international opponents. Many of the reserve side have been training with the first team in the past couple of weeks but this was the first time they would play together in a competitive game.

There were two familiar faces in the line up as Josh Kay and Keifer Cunningham, who weren’t involved on Tuesday, started for the reserves.

The first 10 minutes of the game saw both teams retain possession of the ball and sound each other out. Academica had the first chance after 15 minutes but the free kick was fired wide of the post not testing the keeper.
Gate had a chance of their own five minutes later but Waters who was played through fired over the net. What followed was two half chances for Academica, first the ball was cleared off the line by Benjamin from number 19’s header, then Bleaker got down to save well as the number 9 ran clear.
The first half was full of half chances but neither team really found a real chance.

At half time the managers chose to make changes to the team to give other players chance to impress.

Academica opened the scoring 10 minutes into the second half. A good ball to the back post found Mingachos who controlled the ball with a touch of class before firing the Portuguese side into the lead.

Soon after it was Gate who were on the attack a clever ball from Josh Kay found the run of Waters who’s follow up shot rebounded back off the post. Unfortunalty for Gate it was from this attack that the visitors went 2-0 up. Academica countered down the other end of the pitch in quick fashion with Edu rounding off the move to put them 2-0 up.

A positive factor for Gates young team was that no one’s heads dropped after the second goal went in. If anything conceding spurred the reserves on to really attack the game in search for at least one goal.

Gates best chance came late on, a good cross from Kay found Benjamin but after cleverly controlling the ball he fired wide.