Chorley 9, Gloucester City 0: Magpies on cloud nine after demolition of Gloucester City

‘A fantastic day at the office’ was Jamie Vermiglio’s summing-up of this astonishing Chorley victory over a Gloucester City side which was swept away by a relentless tide of inspired attacking football.
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It was in truth very much one-way traffic as the Magpies produced a blistering first-half display to lead 4-0 at the interval and even improve on that in the second half as they added five more goals.

Eight different players got on the scoresheet, with the opportunist Connor Hall the one player to bag two goals.

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A youthful-looking City team were dealt a major blow when reduced to ten men after 20 minutes, Fabien Robert receiving a straight-red card for a high challenge on man-of-the-match Billy Whitehouse.

Connor Hall scored twice in Chorley's 9-0 rout of Gloucester. (photo: Stefan Willoughby)Connor Hall scored twice in Chorley's 9-0 rout of Gloucester. (photo: Stefan Willoughby)
Connor Hall scored twice in Chorley's 9-0 rout of Gloucester. (photo: Stefan Willoughby)

But the signs had already been ominous for the Tigers, two down when the dismissal occurred and looking there for the taking.

Once Harry Cardwell had steered a superb header into the corner of the net from Connor Hall’s flick-on after eight minutes and Mike Calveley’s firm header 11 minutes later from a pinpoint Whitehouse centre had doubled the lead, there was going to be only one outcome.

A botched clearance by keeper Liam Armstrong on the half-hour let in Hall who rifled the ball into the unguarded net from 20 yards and a minute before half-time a neat build-up culminated in Jon Ustabasi crashing home a fourth from similar range. If it wasn’t previously all over, it was now.

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The avalanche of goals continued at regular intervals after the break, Lewis Baines stabbing the ball into the net on 53 minutes after two shots had been blocked and then Hall tucked away Chorley’s sixth eight minutes later after substitute Millenic Alli had cleverly worked an opening only to see his shot beaten out.

Ollie Shenton’s powerful drive on 70 minutes put Chorley and their fans in seventh heaven and just two minutes later the Duke Street end was rocking again, as Adam Blakeman collected a nicely-disguised short corner and cracked a real beauty into the far corner of the net from just outside the box..

There were still 14 minutes left to play when Alli headed No.9 following a corner and with the home fans in a crowd of 1,125 urging the Magpies to make it 10only two offside-flags spared the bewildered Tigers from a double-figures’ deficit.

It had been all too easy for a rampant Chorley with home keeper Matt Urwin rarely involved.

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Gloucester failed to muster a decent shot on target throughout this one-sided encounter and the pent-up frustration of an embarrassing afternoon for last season’s pacesetters finally boiled over in unseemly scuffles between colleagues as they left the pitch.

CHORLEY : Urwin, Henley, Halls (Blakeman, 13), Leather, Baines, Whitehouse, Calveley (Shenton, 42), Cardwell, Tomlinson, Ustabasi (Alli, 59), Hall. Unused subs. Okome, Blyth.

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