Knight hat-trick sees Wingate beat Bury
Ryman League Premier Division
Wingate & Finchley 4 Bury Town 0
Tuesday, 19 August, 2014
With Bury securing only two points from their opening three games it was important for them to secure a result in this match but their hopes were dashed in the opening 10 minutes when they found themselves three goals down and the match effectively over as a contest.
The only change that manager Danny Nielsen was forced to make was Stuart Lake making his second appearance of the season and replacing the injured Ola Sogbunmi. It was also encouraging to see the available Marc Weatherstone and Ahmet Rifat make the substitutes bench.
The match started with Wingate immediately surging forward and trying to add to the seven goals in three games which puts them at the top of The Premier Division goal-scorers. Anybody stuck in traffic or arriving late at the ground would have missed the “goal storm” that struck Bury in the opening ten minutes. First after only four minutes an exquisite ball from Leon Fisher was latched onto a perfectly timed run by Karl Oluyide who calmly lashed the ball home when one-on-one with goalkeeper Marcus Garnham.
The second followed only a minute later when Rob Laney worked tremendously hard to win the ball from the Bury defender and his perfect cross found the dangerous Knight for his opener for the night which he dispatched with aplomb.
The third goal was to arrive only three minutes later when the best move of the match found Oluyide wide on the left and his pinpoint ball found the assured Knight who made no mistake for his second of the evening.
The band of Wingate & Finchley faithful could not believe their eyes – three up in eight minutes had not been seen in a Premier Division game at Summers Lane before. The rest of the first half saw Wingate & Finchley sit back and soak up some pressure while the work rate across the pitch did not falter. However, Bury hardly gave goalkeeper Bobby Smith any work to do and the half-time score was a fair reflection of the game.
Bury came out in the second half with a more determined attitude and with Wingate happy to contain and consolidate, the second half lacked the sparkle of the first. Bury had possession but kept running into blind alleys as they made little or no progress in the final third of the pitch with the centre back pairing of James Kaloczi and Kieran Street in fine form.
The main event of the second half came in the 59th minute when Knight claimed his hat-trick after rounding the goalkeeper and firing home from a tight angle. A well-deserved first hat-trick for the club and a tremendous display of hard work and excellent finishing form the impressive Knight. The match petered out with a comfortable 4-0 win and leaves Wingate & Finchley sixth in the table and the Premier Division’s highest scorers with 11 from four games as they enter the tough Bank Holiday weekend with a home match on Saturday against Tonbridge, followed by the North London Derby at Enfield on Bank Holiday Monday.
Wingate & Finchley Team:
Bobby Smith, Mark Goodman, Ronayne Marsh Brown, James Kaloczi, Kieran Street, Stuart Lake, Leon Fisher (Marc Weatherstone 65) Tommy Tejan-Sie, Karl Oluyide (Nico Muir 70), David Knight (Ahmet Rifat 75) , Rob Laney
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