Robin Hood 1 Devonshire Cougars 1

A last-minute equaliser from substitute Mark Steede kept alive Devonshire Cougars’ slim hopes of advancing to the semi-finals of the Dudley Eve Trophy.

Cougars were trailing Robin Hood until Steede latched onto a ball over the top and lifted his shot beyond Jason Simons, the Hood goalkeeper, at Bernard Park today.

Steede was subsequently sent off after flicking both his middle fingers towards the Cougars bench during his celebrations in reaction to him being criticised by Omar Butterfield, the Cougars coach, moments earlier.

Cougars, who lost their opening group B match to North Village 4-1, appeared to be heading towards a second defeat after Antwan Russell gave Hood the lead on 51 minutes with a smart finish.

Butterfield’s side, however, refused to wilt in the scorching midday heat with Hood surviving a couple of scares before Steede’s delightful finish in the dying seconds.

Cougars will now hope Hood suffer a heavy defeat against Village in the final group B match at Police Field next weekend.

“This keeps us alive [in the competition] and we got our reward,” Butterfield said.

“Our performance was halfway there today and we need to keep on improving.”

The new Cougars coach said he was proud of his young side’s never-say-die attitude and believes their fighting spirit will serve Cougars well this season.

“We have a very young side and that means I have to do more coaching.” he said.

“We’ve set ourselves some respectable targets, not just to survive but to compete and do well.

“We’ve used [the Dudley Eve Trophy] as more of a pre-season and we will be ready for the start of the league season.”

Butterfield added that he was confident the fallout between Steede and him would soon be resolved.

“It’s difficult to say and I don’t want to put our business in the newspaper,” he said. “Stuff like that finds a way of sorting itself out.”

Kyle Lightbourne, the Hood coach, was disappointed his side could not hold on for victory and believes they had two cast-iron penalty claims turned away by referee Cassandra Trott.

“It wasn’t a good performance and we kind of expected that with the game being at one o’clock in the afternoon,” he said.

“You could tell both teams were fatigued from the heat and we also had two penalties that were not given.

“It was a poor game and I’m disappointed we couldn’t see the game out. It’s early in the season and we still have things to work on.

“If we were playing against a better team I think they would have hammered us.”

TEAMS

Robin Hood (3-5-2): J Simons — P Froncioni, D Cox, D Taylor — E Outerbidge (sub: D Andrade, 75min), A Nelson, N Peskett (sub: C Ryan, 85), Z Burgess (sub: S Burgess, 85), T Dill — A Russell. Substitutes not used: L Simons, N Figureido, S Nasir. Booked: Taylor.

Devonshire Cougars (4-4-2) X Outerbridge-Smith — M Thomas, Z White, K Franks, E Rudo (sub: Z Simmons, 62) — C Burns (sub: C Brangman, 82), K Steede, Z Simmons, S Smith — M Battersbee, C Albouy (sub: M Steede, 62). Substitutes not used: N Simmons, Y Mathes, C Hardtman, S Jones.

Referee: C Trott.