Beer Albion booked their place in the next round of the East Devon Senior Cup with an unconvincing 2-1 victory over Exmouth Town Reserves, writes Mike Adkin.

The visitors have had a difficult start to their season, losing all four Macron League Premier Division games and not having scored a goal to date.

However, the Fishermen struggled to stamp their authority on the game, and in the end were relieved to hear the final whistle.

Beer opened the scoring on nine minutes with a rare goal from the ever willing Shaun Denslow, but the pattern for the game was emerging, with Beer enjoying more possession. However, they played too many long high balls forward, and the final ball lacking the required accuracy.

Exmouth levelled from a 26th minute penalty that also resulted in a yellow card for young glovesman Elliot Driver.

Boosted by their first goal of the campaign, the visitors began to trouble the Fishermen’s defence with some pacey breaks from midfield, but on 38 minutes Beer restored their lead when Ed Karpajev picked up the ball on the right hand side of the visitor’s box and rifled a shot across the goal and in at the far post.

Chris Long then hit the woodwork on 41 minutes, but the Albion were relieved to go in ahead at the break.

The second half saw the game continue in the same vein, with Beer unable to stamp their authority on proceedings, but they could have put the game beyond doubt on 82 minutes when a well struck volley from Simon Smith 30-yards out just whistled past the Exmouth keeper’s left hand post.

Man of the match was awarded to Beer’s John Cooper by match sponsor Woozie’s Deli of Beer, with Chris Watts the pick of the Exmouth players. Next up for the Fishermen is a home league match this coming Saturday (September 22) against unbeaten Newtown, with the game to be sponsored by Bessie Mai’s of Beer.