With the FA insisting the FA Youth Cup tie was played this week, despite a perfectly suitable 3G pitch available next week, the game was played at an alternative venue up at Banstead Athletic.
On a “tricky” pitch both sides struggled to get any decent football played and what followed was a fairly dour encounter.
Croydon opened the scoring on the half hour when we failed to clear a free kick. We huffed and puffed in the second half, and were eventually rewarded with an equaliser five minutes from time when Simon Fraser poked home.
With no further scoring, the tie went straight to penalties, and unfortunately whilst we only converted one of ours, Croydon were successful with three of the spot kicks to progress to the next round.