BILLY RINGS CHANGES AGAINST ORIENT
Pre-season Friendly Crawley Town 0 Leyton Orient 3 By Graham Carter
BILLY Smith used Thursday night s game to ring the changes.
He made no fewer than nine substitutions at half-time.
His opposite number also made nine changes, staggered throughout the match.
Smith used mainly his proposed first team for the first half, with the half-time replacements comprising mainly fringe players and triallists.
Orient fielded a full-strength first team - supported by their mass of substitutions.
Town did well to keep on even terms with their Nationwide Division Three opponents until Rob Carter gave them the lead on 65 minutes with a fine piece of dribbling before side-footing from near the penalty spot.
Craig Brown added a second six minutes later with a brilliantly-taken 25-yard lob over the head of goalkeeper Pat Gannon.
By this time the floodgates had been opened and Orient emphasised their second half superiority with a 74th minute third, headed in from a Naim Uka cross.
But the game was not as one-sided as the scoreline suggests - during the first half Crawley competed on level terms and might well have been a goal up at the interval had not Warren Waugh s 20th goal been disallowed for offside.
Crawley enjoyed superiority for a spell mid-way through the first half.
A minute after Waugh found the net, Leon Huggins looked promising as he shot into the side-netting.
And Nigel Brake came close to taking a 24th minute lead - he struck on target from 25 yards, only for goalkeeper Scott Barrett to be up to the challenge.
Brake can take credit for two impressive showings in three days, using his pace to disturb markers from the professional ranks.
In an otherwise barren second half, triallist Steve Restarick - who looked to have an good eye for an opening - was denied his first goal in his second spell at the club.
He received a great delivery from the right wing by triallist John Timlin, breaking through the penalty area before his shot was saved.
REDS: Little (Gannon 45), Westgate, Brake (Payne 45), Ugbah (Wackett 45), Doherty, Waugh (Boxall 45), Wordsworth (Timlin 45), Anderson Holmes 45), Collins (Moore 45), Huggins (Restarick 45), Dack (Sargent 20)
ATTENDANCE: 523
OBSERVER MAN OF THE MATCH: Nigel Brake
Published: 27.7.01 West Sussex Newspapers Ltd
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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