Goals from Luke Molyneux and Harrison Biggins saw Doncaster Rovers into a 2-goal lead in the League 2 play-off semi-final against Crewe Alexandra at the Alexandra Stadium yesterday.
Manager Lee Bell made 1 change from last Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Colchester United with Josh Austerfield coming into the team for Chris Long, who dropped down to the bench where he was joined by Conor Thomas and Ed Turns who both returned after injury. Former Alex loanee Jamie Sterry started for the visitors while Alex Academy alum Billy Waters was named among their substitutes.
The game’s opening chance came in the 6th minute with a Mickey Demetriou long-throw getting through to Elliott Nevitt whose header didn’t test Timothee Lo-Tutula before a second chance allowed Rio Adebisi to do the same a minute later. The visitors took the lead 10 minutes before the break as an attack down their left saw Matthew Craig get in behind with his pull-back smashed home by Molyneux from the edge of the 6-yard box before Biggins clipped the bar with a curling effort from the edge of the area.
The second half saw the second goal come 4 minutes after the break with a forward header from Tom Anderson saw Demetriou make a mistake, allowing Joe Ironside in to cross for Biggins to score from 6 yards out. With 10 minutes to play, a clearance from Adebisi forced Lo-Tutala to palm the ball over his crossbar with the resulting corner cleared back out to Adebisi, his cross turned goalwards by Zac Williams with substitute Long heading over.
The next couple of games see the Alex travelling to face the same opposition on Friday (10th, 8 pm) with the winners advancing to the play-off final at Wembley on Sunday 19th May with a 1 pm kick-off.
Final Thoughts:
It’s only half-time in the tie but it’s going to be a difficult task to overcome the 2-goal deficit against a team with the run that Doncaster have been on.
After the first 20-25 minutes where the Alex played well, it was the first goal that saw Donny take control of the game with the second goal completely knocking the stuffing out of the hosts with the visitors controlling the game from that point.
Alexandra Stadium
League 2
6/05/2024 6:30 pm
Attendance: 8220
Referee: Sunny Singh Gill
| Crewe Alexandra | Doncaster Rovers | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Molyneux, Biggins | |||||||
| Stryjek | Lo-Tutula | ||||||
| Billington | Sterry | ||||||
| Demetriou | Anderson | ||||||
| Williams | Wood | ||||||
| Cooney | 56 | Maxwell | |||||
| Austerfield | 56 | Bailey | |||||
| Tabiner | 68 | Craig | 84 | ||||
| Holicek | Biggins | 50 | |||||
| Adebisi | Molyneux | ||||||
| Nevitt | Ironside | ||||||
| Tracey | 84 | Adelakun | 75 | ||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Lenarcik | Jones | ||||||
| Long | 68 | Olowu | |||||
| Thomas | 56 | Broadbent | 84 | ||||
| Baker-Richardson | 56 | Rowe | 50 | ||||
| Turns | Hurst | 75 | |||||
| Rowe | 84 | Westbrooke | |||||
| Kirk | Waters | ||||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 8 | Goal attempts | 13 |
| 2 | On Target | 6 |
| 3 | Corners | 3 |
| 12 | Fouls | 9 |
| 1 | Yellow Cards | 0 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 44 | % | 56 |