Coggeshall Town booked their place in the quarter final of League Challenge Cup with a excellent display away from home at Ipswich Wanderers who operate in a league above. Coggeshall used the cup competition to again field a changed team with 6 players in the starting eleven who didn’t feature in the previous Saturday’s lineup.

The match got the go ahead after the officials inspected the playing surface as it was just starting to freeze but it was deemed ok to play so the match kicked off on a bitterly cold night.” The Town” made a bright start looking to get on the ball from the off putting together some slick passing moves. George Cocklin and Tom Colville were pulling the strings in the midfield areas for Coggeshall giving the returning Darren Mills up front plenty of ball to work with. It was Some great hold up play from Mills on two occasions that gave the away team their first openings as he held the ball up well to first play in Tom Holdstock and then Edilson Cruz but neither could apply a finish to give “The Town”  advantage. Coggeshall continued to attack the home team regularly with some neat possession play limiting Ipswich to the occasional counter attack. The breakthrough came on the half hour but this time it was from a long ball from the back which Jordan Palmer flicked on towards Edilson Cruz who managed to beat the Ipswich defender and keeper to head home from 12 yards for his fourth goal of the season. The goal was no more than Coggeshall deserved as they had been on top for the majority of the game. The remainder of the half played out in a similar fashion but Ipswich did conjure up a couple of efforts on the Coggeshall goal but Matt Walker in ” The Town ” goal managed to keep them out to send the team in with a 1-0 lead at half time.

The second half continued in much the same way with Coggeshall dominating the possession and looking more likely to get the next goal.After 55 minutes Coggeshall introduced leading goal scorer Nnamdi Nwachuku who had started the match on the bench. Nwachuku was soon involved linking up with Mills on two occasions to create half chances that were kept out by the Ipswich keeper. Coggeshall continued to press hard for the second goal with Tom Holdstock down the right flank proving a real handful.Goal number two finally came on 70 mins after a good ball forward from Abednego Mensah set Nwachuku away who cut inside to beat his defender showing some great skill and finished from a tight angle. The second goal really sealed the victory for Coggeshall and there was no way back for Ipswich who were reduced down to ten men in the final minutes after having a player sent off.The final whistle went meaning the team had moved into the next round comfortably, again showing the depth and quality in the squad after resting several players on the night.

It was a great all round squad performance  and will hopefully set the team up well for two tricky looking home games coming up starting with Whitton United on Saturday at West Street.