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A late return from Watford in the early hours of Saturday morning was hardly ideal to allow me to get down to Gawthorpe for an 11 a.m. kick off as the under-18s opened their season with a home game against Bristol City.

Strangely, the Gawthorpe name is one the club seems to have dropped. They did so when the training ground was sponsored but since that ended a year ago they’ve opted not to re-introduce the one word that everyone knows it by.

Always Gawthorpe to me, it’s a place I’ve visited many times over the years from the days of it being hardly fit for purpose to the wonderful facility we now have. I’ve been drenched more times than I care to mention and blown off course with the high winds, but this time it was all about ensuring you were protected from the sun and keeping hydrated so well done Burnley FC for supplying us all with free bottles of water.

On the pitch, it wasn’t the best. In the early part of the game it looked as though we were struggling to master the art of playing out from the back and it cost us on thirteen minutes when Bristol City took advantage to go in front.

It took us some time to recover from that but as the half wore on, we started to come more and more into it. Joe Westley hit the post with one effort and Ryan Tioffo saw a goal ruled out for a tight offside.

We deserved to be level at least and it came as no surprise when we did force an equaliser in the first minute of stoppage time. The ball dropped for Tioffo whose shot from just outside the box took a deflection.

For more than a quarter of an hour from the beginning of the second half, we were much the better team but that all changed after Bristol City regained the lead and for much of the remainder of the game we didn’t look as though we’d get back into it.

Afterwards, Tony Philliskirk said: “We were really poor in the second half. On the balance of play, Bristol City deserved to win. Today, where it really mattered, they were better than us. Ultimately, you lose the game through poor decision making.”

The teams were;

Burnley: Charlie Casper, Tosin Olopade, Nathan James, Joe Ashton, Brad Grant (Jack Bates 82), Callum West (Jack Rogers 65), Dylan Sime (Rohan Vaughan 77), Wiktor Gromek, Vernon Masara (Lucas Wane 82), Ryan Tioffo, Jack Westley. Sub not used: Jon Ander Vilar Robinson.

Bristol City: Mac Boyd, Joseph James, Taine Anderson, Callum Henlett, Josh Campbell-Slowey, Zack Ali, Tim Ap-Sion, Jed Meerholz, Brandon Oputeri, Callum Hutton, Ephraim Yeboah. Subs: Joseph Duncan, Jaden Brown, Kai Churchley, Filbert Owusu-Antwi, Elijah Morrison.

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