Sidmouth Town Under-14s once again land the Life Members Cup with Miller the hat-trick star

Town, fielding a strong squad for the match, took charge from the start and each member of the squad played a role in what became one of the finest collective displays of the season! The midfield quartet of Alex Stone, Joe Miller, Ed Doble and Ben Miller dominated possession and were the heartbeat of the team. They constantly created opportunities for strike pairing Connor Murphy and Freddie King. It was only the excellence of the Honiton keeper that denied Town a number of times before Ben Miller opened the scoring after some neat approach play from King. Honiton were only able to muster counter-attacks and these were dealt most competently with by the Town back four of Tom Orchard, Jamie Newbery, Jonny Surtees and Alister Forsyth which left keeper Henry Bartlett to mop up behind them in some comfort. On the stroke of half-time a terrific ball by Orchard found King in space and he drew the keeper out before unselfishly squaring to Miller to roll the ball home and send Town in two up. After the break the flow of the game was the same with Town the dominant team. King made it three before Jack Harwood added even more energy to the performance. He was unlucky on a couple of occasions not to get his name on the score sheet before the fourth and final goal arrived with five minutes remaining when Miller completed his hat-trick.

Manager Sean Murphy said: “When we play like that then we can beat absolutely anybody. We could have scored three of four more. I am really proud of all the lads with this performance and we managed to maintain our 100 per cent record here at St James’ Park. It was nice as a couple of the new players had never played here before and they didn’t let the occasion daunt them. That was easily our best performance of the season so far and hopefully we continue in that manner as we still have second place in the league and another cup competition to fight for.”