Defeat at Wellmen for young Nomads side

Saturday afternoon saw The Nomads continue our pre-season preparations with a defeat to Holywell Town.

Craig Harrison started a young team including three U19 players and an 18 year-old trialist and within the first 5 minutes, Harrison was forced to replace Joe Malkin with another trialist as Malkin suffered a dead leg early on.

The Nomads enjoyed much of the first half exchanges with 19 year old Iwan Roberts forcing a low save from Keighan Jones before Jon Rushton stopped Jake Cooke at the opposite end.

On the 20 minute mark, tempers flared in the box as multiple Holywell players surrounded captain George Horan and a few tackles went in that were more than friendly in nature for this pre-season fixture.

Aron Williams nearly pounced on a short backpass on the half hour mark only to see his closing down ricochet the ball behind for a goal kick before Ryan Harrington forced a smart save from Keighan Jones in the Holywell goal.

Just before half time, Holyell would take the lead as Dany Sullivan scrambled home a deep free kick, despite an offside flag not being spotted by the referee in the build up to the free kick.

Shortly after half time Cooke would go through one-on-one with Rushton, but The Nomads' stopper came out on top and The Nomads would go on to continually attack the Holywell goal throughout the remainder of the game with efforts from Harry Owen going narrowly wide and pinballing off the line whilst Josh Williams had a few efforts from the edge of the box that needed pushing around the post, including an intelligent low free kick that Williams placed under the jumping wall.

The Nomads had made wholesale changes throughout the second half and with around 10 mintues to go, Holywell doubled their advantage through a well taken Danny Andrews free kick.

Whilst The Nomads fell to a defeat, the game was a case of more minutes in the tank for the squad and the opporutnity for Craig Harrison to look at a number of youth players and trialists in first team scenarios ahead of the season with another game coming on Tuesday night away to Llandudno.

Match Photos

Match Report by Nik Mesney