Throgmorton Cup

Liskeard Athletic 6

Okehampton Argyle 2

ARGYLE struggled to put a team together for this first round League Cup match against premier division Liskeard and paid the price allowing the home side to record their first win of the season.

Regular defenders Alex Wren and James Williams were unavailable and leading striker Brad Ausden has now left for university, so manager Stuart Cann had to make one of his occasional appearances and the bench contained untried signings plus Steve Madge returning from injury.

The first half still started well for Argyle as within 30 seconds, a clever long ball forward from Cann split the home defence and bounced over home keeper Bainbridge's head for John Coakley to run on and fire home from 15 yards from a narrow angle. Oke looked on top in the first 15 minutes but gradually their inability to find their own players as they moved forward presented opportunities for Liskeard.

On 20 minutes, Phil Burgoine levelled for Liskeard after sloppy Argyle midfield play. Seven minutes later, Oke almost regained the lead again when a tremendous shot from Ollie Crimmins rattled the home post, but on 34 minutes, Liskeard took the lead when a long cross in from the right was parried by keeper Craig Mulholland into the path of Robbie Almond who made no mistake.

Within 30 seconds of the restart, Argyle had thrown the game away as a retreating defence allowed Reece Small to carry the ball unchallenged into the penalty area before firing home.

Argyle now looked second best and Liskeard added further goals from Steven Matthews, Phil Burgoine and Ben Waters with a solitary reply from Dale Chadwick, who fired home off the crossbar from just inside the box.

This was a disappointing performance from Argyle, who, despite the missing players, should have been capable of making a game of it. Their passing in midfield was atrocious and despite a lot of hard work and good tackling to win the ball, it was regularly then given to a Liskeard player. Jamie Palfeyman, Ollie Crimmins and John Coakley were the pick of the Argyle players on the day.