And like Friday night’s Jersey Football Association Centenary celebration game at the same venue, which an Island senior team won 4-1, it was football supporters – again just around 120 attended – who missed out on some quality football and several breathtaking goals.
Jersey manager Dave Matthews said: ‘I was disappointed we lost, the last two goals were down to our errors – one throwing the ball inside when it should have gone up the touch-line while the fourth we should have closed the player down quicker.
‘We lost and we lost to four brilliant goals all hit with great power.
Overall I’m relatively pleased, it was a new team playing together for the first time and after a patchy start we played some good football in the second half.’ England LD Technical Director Jeff Davis said: ‘We’ve had two excellent games against Jersey sides and they they have given us a good measure for the future.
‘Being world champions it’s difficult to get challenging games but Jersey provided that for us this weekend.
‘It was interesting to see how we would react yesterday after going behind and I thought we showed great character to nick a win.’ An acute angled strike from the left by James Morris put the visitors ahead and midway through the period England’s learning difficulty lads, many of them semi-professionals, extended their lead with a thumping strike from 23 yards by Scott Curley Jersey, who were being pressed hard when in possession, reduced the deficit when Dave Le Roux guided the ball inside a far post after excellent build-up between Craig Leitch and Craig Russell.
Substitute Danny Craven, a former pro, linked well with Luke Watson to score Jersey’s second – skilfully woven by Watson before Craven dropped his shoulder to fox his marker and hit the target from 12 yards.
Craven pounced to steal the ball off the goalkeeper and a defender to roll Jersey into a 3-2 lead only for England to equalise ten minutes from the end with a blistering Dean Earle strike from 25 yards.
John Fitzmaurice missed a great chance one-on-one with the goalkeeper to seal a late Jersey win but it was England who stole it when Curley followed up his shot that came back off the woodwork to gain England victory.
