Analysis: AFC Telford United produce 'display of dominance' in six-goal FA Cup showing

One of the demands Kevin Wilkin has made of his team in recent weeks is to recognise when their opponents are vulnerable and apply the coup de grâce.

This performance provided strong evidence that the message is sinking in. The Bucks built on the boost of an early Dylan Allen-Hadley goal to leave the Quakers quaking with a spell of three goals in six minutes either side of the half-hour mark.

Matty Stenson struck twice, and Quakers defender Toby Lees turned a cross into his own net as the Bucks flooded towards goal at every opportunity, asking questions to which the hosts knew very few of the answers. 

It seems churlish to suggest it, given that they led 4-0 at the break, but had their finishing been more clinical, it genuinely could have been six or seven, and there’d have been few complaints.

Wilkin made two changes to the starting eleven that had been defeated at home by AFC Fylde a week earlier. With keeper Josh Gracey away on international duty with the Northern Ireland Under-19s, the Bucks had to draft in Jamie Pardington from Lincoln City, and he made an immediate debut. 

Adan George dropped to the substitutes’ bench, with Stenson restored to the forward line. On a bright and mild afternoon in County Durham, the Bucks hit the ground running, determined not to repeat their ponderous first-half showing in a 2-2 draw at the same venue on August Bank Holiday Monday. 

On that day, they had to dig deep and recover a 2-0 deficit, but the only digging they did on this visit was to prepare a plot in which to bury the hosts' FA Cup aspirations.

An early corner kick and subsequent long throw brought an off-target header from Stenson with barely two minutes played. 

The Quakers matched that with a sliced shot from midfielder Will Hatfield, moving onto the ball and letting it run onto his right foot from 25 yards.The opening goal arrived after eight minutes, the result of the hosts’ ill-advised desire to play out from their penalty area and the Bucks’ hunger to press and force turnovers.

Keeper Pete Jameson tapped a free-kick given for offside to Elliott Forbes, but his path forward was blocked. Forbes played his captain, Tom Platt, into trouble, and midfield duo Remi Walker and Alex Fletcher seized possession to play Stenson through. 

Jameson made a terrific low save to his right to deny him and reprieve his colleagues, but it was a temporary respite. From Walker’s left-wing corner, Jameson made the ball his, but then inexplicably dropped it, and Dylan Allen-Hadley’s reactions were fastest. 

The winger lashed the loose ball into the roof of the net from inside the six-yard box, and the Bucks had the perfect platform.

Plenty of time remained for the hosts, but Wilkin’s side were keen to deny them the chance to regain a foothold. The Bucks managed the ball well and were always alert to opportunities to attack. 

Ammar Dyer’s overlapping from right back twice got him into shooting positions, neither of which he could make the most of, but it was the midfield where the Bucks were dominating.

Walker, Fletcher, and Khanya Leshabela are now Wilkin’s first-choice trio in that area, with Walker and Leshabela given licence by their captain’s positional awareness to go forward, carrying the ball to Darlington’s final third.

It was Leshabela who won a corner in a move that proved to be pivotal for both sides. Quakers midfielder Hatfield went down with an injury in the build-up, and after a delay that saw hin leave the field, the Bucks retained possession from the corner and set up a phase of play that brought the second goal.

Darlington clearly hoped Hatfield could return and didn’t make a substitution. The Bucks exploited their numerical advantage, and when Cranston’s left-wing delivery found Stenson, he steered the ball wide of Jameson to his left and into the net off the far post. 

It was a predator’s finish, aided by a terrific ball, and the Quakers were undone. The goal precipitated a purple patch that had this tie won in a six-minute spell. Allen-Hadley ought to have made it three little over a minute later, but his strike at goal from the left of the box, moving onto Jamie Meddows’ low ball from the right of the box, aimed to the top corner, flashed too high.

It mattered little, as Leshabela soon strode through midfield again, released Dyer on the right, and his cross on the overlap was missed by Forbes and rebounded off the shins of his defensive colleague, Toby Lees. 

The ball rolled past a wrong-footed Jameson to his left, and the home crowd’s stunned silence just amplified the Bucks’ noisy jubilance.

That came in the 33rd minute, and by the 35th it was 4-0. Almost from the restart, Darlington, now back to eleven players, with Ellis Stanton replacing Hatfield, were ponderous in possession, allowing Leshabela to steal the ball and advance. 

Walker sprinted alongside his colleague, took his short pass and then guided the kind of cross that Stenson dreams about into the six-yard box. The Bucks striker slid in with Lees at the far post and got the decisive touch.

The Quakers' response was a corner that the Bucks dealt with, Pardington finally seeing some action and making an easy claim.The Bucks launched further attacks almost at will, not by going hell for leather, but by combining control and menace. 

It wasn’t hard to spot the Quaker’s vulnerabilities, as they were just about everywhere on the pitch. Their manager, Steve Watson, the former Newcastle, Everton and Aston Villa player, had seen enough and didn’t wait until half-time to substitute captain Platt and his equally hapless colleague Lees, both of whom had looked flat-footed against the Bucks’energetic approach.

It must have felt like playing whack-a-mole, trying to stop the Bucks’ multiple threats, and before the interval, they could and maybe should have had half a dozen.

Walker side-footed the ball just wide to Jameson’s left, arriving onto Allen-Hadley’s low cross after Meddows had sent the winger sprinting past his marker and into the space behind him. 

Allen-Hadley was then probably guilty of being too deliberate, delaying his shot and seeing it deflected over the crossbar after creating the opportunity with a simple block tackle on halfway and racing clear.

The boos that greeted the Quakers at the half-time whistle must have felt like music to Wilkin’s ears, but the Bucks boss would doubtless have stressed that Darlington would see kto respond in the second half.

They did, but it lasted barely five minutes. A free-kick for a foul by Dyer on Middlesbrough loanee Charlie Lennon, touted as a significant threat, but almost anonymous, as dealt with.

A resulting corner, from the right, was nodded down and wide by substitute Tom Allan, Cranston’s presence preventing a clean header, and that was pretty much that.

The next twenty minutes weren’t exactly stagnant, but Darlington lacked the desire and heart to try to make a game of it. That allowed the Bucks to manage the game, retain possession and keep the hosts where they wanted them.

Pardington was a little busier, holding Cedric Main’s cross from the right at his near post andthen making a genuine save to stop Main’s attempt to steer the ball wide to his left when the Quakers’ danger man was given a rare sight of the target.

Stenson’s chest control, swivel, and volleyed effort from substitute Charlie Williams’ cross almost brought him his hat-trick, whilst Pardington stood up to block a shot from Aidan Rutledge, another Quakers substitute, who was played through by Allan.

The debutant keeper’s one error of the afternoon was to lose the flight of a cross, perhaps in the low sunshine, and allow the ball to drop in his six-yard box. His defensive colleagues swooped to hack the ball away, and a follow-up Quakers effort cleared the crossbar.

Stenson made way for Adan George, who Wilkin admitted could feel unlucky to have been left out, and he responded exactly the way his manager would have wanted, grabbing two goals.

In the 71st minute, George latched onto Jordan Piggott’s ball from deep, got the better of defender Forbes and then beat Jameson into the keeper’s left-hand bottom corner to take the score to five.

A little over ten minutes later, substitute Rhys Hilton picked up possession in the centre-circle and aimed a through ball to the left of the Quakers’ defence for George to accelerate. Three touches to carry the ball forward and a fourth to tuck it under Jameson, and the Bucks had half a dozen, whilst Darlo had egg on their faces.

Home fans had left in droves after the fifth goal, and more left after the sixth, meaning it was the delighted and exuberant 100 or so Bucks fans who could be heard at the final whistle. 

They could probably scarcely believe what they’d seen.

Attendance: 2,042.

AFC Telford United (4-3-3): Pardington, Dyer (Fridye-Harper 81’), Cranston, Piggott,Cawthorne, Fletcher ©, Walker (Rowe 86’), Leshabela, Meddows (Hilton 79’), Stenson(George 68’), Allen-Hadley (Williams 49’).

Subs: (unused) Lawal, Dinanga.

Goals: Allen-Hadley (8’), Stenson (27’, 35’), Own Goal (Lees) (33’), George (71’, 84’).

Cautioned: Leshabela.

Darlington FC: Jameson, Barton, Barrow, Lees (Allan 40’), Forbes. Platt © (Scott 40’), Hatfield (Stanton 28’), McGowan, Lennon (Rutledge 58’), Main (Cornish 68’), Maskell.

Subs (unused): McGrath, Griffiths.

Cautioned: Rutledge.

Referee: John Mulligan.