MORE MASON MAGIC

Friday night saw Cemaes Bay, unbeaten all season and third in the league, clash with Holy Isle, who lie second in the league, level on points with the leaders, for a place in the KonX Wales Dargie Cup Semi-final.
The Bay elected to play up `the slope’ and it proved to be a good choice when after just five minutes they edged ahead. The visitors had possession, bringing the ball out of defence interchanging passes when just inside the opposition half a pass was played a bit short and Steve Mason nipped in to intercept. Catching the defenders on the back-foot, he raced towards the goal with defenders straining to catch .............., but all in vain as, from the edge of the box, he let fly with his `lethal right foot’ to send the ball low into the bottom corner [1-0] If Cemaes thought the early goal would set them on the way to controlling the game they were most certainly wrong and three minutes later they had a rude awakening, when Barry Haig seized on the ball, turned the defender, leaving him rooted to the spot as he bore down on goal to fire into the net from an acute angle. [1-1] The Isle began to influence the game and should have gone ahead [literally] on twenty seven minutes, when a powerful free kick hit a defender on his head sending the ball looping over the despairing keeper to bounce off the top of the cross-bar, much to the relief of the hosts who could have been going in at half-time a goal down.

The seconds half was proving to be a dour struggle with the game `even Steven’ until `Steven’, Mason, that is, collected a long ball over the top from Ricky Jones and drove the ball home [2-1]. The visitors probably did not deserve to be trailing but worse was to follow just over the hour mark, and needless to say it was Mason inflicting the damage again, striking from the edge of the box to complete his hat-trick and give the Bay some breathing space [3-1] With two minutes remaining, it was all over for the Isle as a Sion Wyn Griffiths shot took a deflection to find the net. This was a cruel end for the visitors whose performance was never a 4-1 difference.

Cemaes management were quick to concede that they did not perform to their usual standard, and had some luck just at the right time, but this was a cup tie, and a very important one, and to win was the name of the game and we did, so we are happy we achieved our aim.