Great Paxton manager Mark Spavins said David Watts was Captain Superb for his team when they came back from 1-0 down to beat Hemingfords United 3-1 in the final of the Hunts FA’s Scott Gatty Intermediate Cup on Wednesday evening.
Hemingfords took an early lead through their prolific goalscorer Arron Mackay but a 25-minute hold-up while the injured Paxton player Ryan Baxter was treated and taken to hospital with a knee injury broke the momentum and Spavins’ side hit the woodwork three times before scoring three times in the second half.
“To be honest, the break in play helped us,” said the manager. “Brett Swales [the Hemingfords manager] had his team set up really well. We like to get the ball down and play football, but they had three men on us at all times. They just didn’t let us play. Hemingfords were brilliant for the first 24 minutes.
“But after the break in play we hit the woodwork twice and at half times we changed things around and our skipper David Watts was Captain Superb.
“It was the first time we have been in the Scott Gatty final and it is the most senior cup we have ever won – we are thrilled.”
Hemingfords were already well in control when Mackay ran on to a through ball and beat Adam Michelin in the fifth minute for 1-0. Mackay had a chance to double that lead in the 17th minute but shot wide when he might have been better off squaring the ball.
It was in the 24th minute that Baxter went down during an attack after feeling his knee ‘pop out’ – the hold-up in play lasted for the remainder of the 45 minutes and when the game restarted, there were 19 minutes of injury time added.
Paxton hit the crossbar twice in one attack but lost influential goalscorer Ashleigh Lewis to a dead leg in injury time and Hemingfords might have been feeling confident.
But in the second half the balance shifted and Paxton went close several times. Perhaps Hemingfords should have been awarded a penalty when Arron Mackay was brought down when through on goal – but the referee waved away his team-mate’s protests, and another penalty appeal was turned down when there was a hint of handball in the Paxton area.
But the equaliser came from the boot of Watts, whose free kick from 35 yards went straight through Hemingfords goalkeeper Dan Richmond’s hands, and from a corner soon after Mark Davies made it 2-1 with a bullet header.
The third Paxton goal was a sublime free kick from Watts, this time the goalkeeper had no chance.
Swales, the Hemingfords manager, was gutted. He told The Hunts Post: “We had two good shouts for a penalty but I’m not going to blame that on the defeat.
“We switched off when the injury happened and we never came back out after that.
“I’m not going to blame the decisions, we had our chances but we didn’t play well enough after the injury and it was down to us in the end. You win some and you lose some.”
It’s back to Senior A Cambs League action for Hemingfords on Saturday when they play bottom-of-the-table Cambridge University Press Res, but division-mates Paxton have another cup game, this one in the semi-finals of the Cambs FA’s William Cockell Memorial Cup against Cherry Hinton.
One player definitely missing from that game will be Baxter, whose knee ‘popped back in’ when he was put on the stretcher by the paramedics, said Spavins.
“He has suffered ligament damage,” said his manager, joking: “Though I don’t know why he couldn’t just play on once his knee was back in.”
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