What a difference a week makes, after last weeks bare eleven scraped through in the county cup this week East had 16 quality players to choose from and it showed with their best performance of the season. Last year East destroyed Leigh Athletic away with superb 4-0 victory, and this performance was just as impressive.

Leigh Athletic are a very well run club and their second team are a good side who will be up there challenging for the title and the cup competitions come the end of the season, unfortunately for Leigh they came up against a superior side today.

Although the 5-1 scoreline suggests it was all one way traffic that certainly wasn't the case as the first opportunity fell to the big Leigh centre forward whose good effort was kept out by the impressive Stephens. After that East dominated for the next 20 minutes and ran in three goals. The first goal was great link up play between Williams and Re, with Williams playing a superb through ball for Re to smash home from eight yards.

The second came five minutes later when Nield whipped in a superb corner and Howarth met the ball at the far post with a cracking header which left the Leigh keeper no chance. The third goal was the pick of the game East played their way out of trouble at the back, then Wolstenholme and Merryman exchanged passes before Merryman clipped a quality 40 yard pass over the back four for Williams to run onto to chip the keeper from outside the area. 3-0 to the good, Leigh threw caution to the wind for ten minutes prior to half time again they created good chances but a combination of poor finishing and good last ditch defending allowed East to go into half time break three goals to the good.

Parkin and Wilkinson let the side know that all though the first half performance was brilliant, the game wasn't over and plenty of effort was required to gain the three points, and credit to the side all the players worked their socks off to preserve the lead in the second half. It was no concidence that the side shown a greater determination as there was five quality subs available and this allowed Parkin to make subsitutes which strengthened the performance further. The fourth goal came after 15 minutes of the second period when again Williams played in Re to finish well, and Williams got his second of the game when O'Connor chipped the ball to Williams who again lobbed the keeper with the aid of a deflection. Unfortunately the Leigh centre forward scored a consolation in the last minute.

As club secretary Dave Wilkinson said after the game it was the best amateur game he had seen all season, and all the players from both sides should be proud of their performances.

As for East if they can keep this squad together they will certainly win some silverware this season, hopefully they can build on this week with next weeks game at Bury Amateurs.

EMFC