Crawley Town Academy extend unbeaten run with Swindon Town win

Two goals from Charlie Mark and one from substitute Alfie Sayle was enough to keep pace with league leaders JMA Reading and put a six-point cushion between themselves and their Wiltshire visitors

The Academy ‘A’ team extended their unbeaten run to six games Wednesday afternoon as they overcame a strong Swindon Town side to win 3-1 in the National Football Youth League South Championship.

Two goals from Charlie Mark and one from substitute Alfie Sayle was enough to keep pace with league leaders JMA Reading and put a six-point cushion between themselves and their Wiltshire visitors.

It was a gritty first half with both teams looking to carve an opening and it was five minutes before half time when Charlie Mark open the scoring from a Crawley Town corner. The ball was whipped in from the right to bypass bodies in the 18-yard area with Mark heading in at the back post to make it 1-0 to the Reds.

Early in the second-half Swindon produced a similar headed goal at the back post from a corner to bring the teams level and momentum swung away from the hosts.

With ten minutes to go Swindon had a player sent off after clawing the ball off the line with his hand giving Charlie Mark the opportunity to slot home from 12 yards - which he calmly took to make it 2-1.

Louie Erotokritos produced a save to deny Swindon with a bobbling long-range effort to keep the game level with moments to go and as Crawley fought back from a spell of pressure Alfie Sayle picked up the ball in the middle of the 18 yard box and placed it into the bottom left corner to put the hosts 3-1 ahead.

The ‘A’ team season has started brightly with the team unbeaten in all their league games this season. They next face Solihull Moors at home, a team that have yet to win in their opening seven games and will need a result if they want to overtake the league leaders.

Education Academy Head Coach Rob Semark said: “I was a really big game for us with Swindon sitting third and ourselves second; so it was important to to get favourable result to keep Swindon at arms-length.

With our domination in the first-half we didn't really create enough clear-cut chances but I still felt that we deserved to go in at half-time one-nil up.

It got a little bit tense when they pulled the goal back and the game seemed to be in the balance a little bit, but I still felt confident that with our cutting edge we would still come out on top.

We applied quite a bit of pressure and then got the penalty which Charlie Mark did fantastically well to tuck away.

They threw things at us, tried to put us under pressure; played a lot of long balls; had a lot of set pieces; but we stuck to it and I think we deserved the win.