Bury - 3 (Johnrose 9. 58. Matthews 23.)
Crystal Palace - 0

As usual with these early rounds of the Cup it is almost impossible to find out much information about the game. As the result was not particularly good for Palace I guess it is understandable that not many of the supporters over in England want to talk about it very much. With a 3-0 deficit to overcome it would be very surprising if many of our supporters bother to attend the second leg next week, and I would think that the fact that I can find very little about the Cup matches will be the least of my worries, as Palace will not be taking part! Having said that, maybe they will surprise us and attack the match, and end up winning the home tie 4-0. We can all live in hope!

The little information that I was able to get on the match somewhat obviously concentrated on the goalscorers for Bury and very little else, though I can report that this match did feature the debuts of Sun Jihai and Fan Zhiyi, and was closely followed by (and get ready for this number!) 1,208,000,000 fans in China!! If you are having trouble even saying that number it is a little over 1.2 billion. What a shame that the match gave them such a poor result! Palace started off quite brightly, but in the 9th minute Lenny Johnrose headed home a corner from Matthews. A good cross from Jamie Smith looked destined for Neil Shipperley who was unmarked at the far post, but the ball was cut off by Lucketti. Shortly after this our first piece of bad luck really hit home. Sun Jihai fell awkwardly and had to be carried off with a badly sprained ankle. It would appear that he will be out of the game for a few weeks to come. A low drive by Matt Jansen was well saved by Kiely, who then made an equally fine stop from an Attilio Lombardo attempt. Preece was responsible for making the second goal, though it was Matthews that managed to get on to the ball to claim Bury's second.

In the second half Marcus Bent and Attilio combined well to put Matt free, but once more Kiely was equal to the task. A killer blow came when, from an corner, a replica of the first half saw Matthews send the ball in and Johnrose head it home. The fight was gone from the side, and Preece was somewhat unlucky not to increase the advantage for the second leg. I guess that we will just have to accept the fact that our chances look very slim of progressing any further in the Cup this season, and we may just have to settle for the three points in the League match against Bury as a "fair" exchange!

Colin Pryce

Bury: Kiely, Woodward (D. Swailes 23), Barrick, Daws, Lucketti, Patterson, C. Swailes, Matthews (Jemson 76), D'Jaffo (Ellis 72), Johnrose, Preece.
Not Used: Kenny. Avdiv.

Crystal Palace: Digby, Austin, Smith, Jihai (Bent 18), Rodger, Zhiyi, Lombardo, Hreidarsson, Shipperley, Jansen, Mullins.
Not Used: Linighan. Ormshaw. Morrison. Rizzo.

Attendance: 2,780
Referee: Mr G Laws (Whitley Bay).