Gloucester City turned their form around on Saturday afternoon, beating National League South side Braintree Town 3-0 in the Isuzu FA Trophy.
Goals from Joe Parker, Ben Beresford and Brandon Smalley helped the Tigers into the next round of the cup competition despite the club’s poor recent display in league action.
City sat rock bottom of the National League North division prior to the game, having lost their previous five games on the bounce, but manager Mike Cook had praise to share on their impressive 3-0 victory at the Tiger Turf Stadium.
“This has been the first good performance since I’ve been here and I have been here around seven weeks now,” said Cook. “It is the first game where we have controlled the full 90 minutes not really looking that threatened, so from a coaches point of view, it’s a good start point and hopefully we can build on that.”
“ It’s certainly a lot better from everybody and the supporters. It has been a fantastic week for us, definitely a confidence booster, but I thought we thoroughly deserved this.”
The game started with both teams flying out the blocks with action coming from both ends thick and fast, however neither team could take the lead in the first half.
It took 52 minutes to break the deadline when Parker smashed it home after an undefended corner, bringing his Gloucester goal tally up to 50.
Cook’s side saw their best spell in the final 10 minutes of the game and Beresford managed to double the lead after his headed effort beat Jack Sims in the Iron goal.
As the game rolled on, Gloucester weren’t finished as Smalley poked the ball in on the line just minutes after the second, sending the T End into limbs.
Regardless of the win, the home side’s injury problems continued with Joe Hanks and Liam Armstrong subbed off with injuries.
“I think Hanksy got knocked on the head last week, we had him assessed and he was okay to play this week, but he has taken another bang to the head so we will have to monitor him,” continued Cook.
“Liam also came off after getting a kick in the head; we didn’t want him to be too busy within the last 10 minutes of the game, he did take a hell of a blow but seems to be fine.”
Gloucester now look forward to the next round draw which is set to take place on Monday, November 20th at 1pm.
