Newcastle United U-18s 0 Aston Villa U-18s 1

Apr 17 2010 by Lee Ryder, The Journal

NEWCASTLE United may not have made it to the FA Youth Cup final but there is still every reason to believe that several of Joe Joyce’s Academy youngsters can make the step up to the first team in the not so distant future.

The Magpies dominated the first leg of the tie with Aston Villa last week and also came out of the blocks in jet-heeled fashion in front of almost 5,000 fans at St James’ Park last night.

Academy director Joyce said afterwards: “We have done well to come this far and it is disappointing. But overall we can have no complaints. We had chances and didn’t take them.”

The story of the cup run for Joyce’s team has been some wonderful attacking play and the goals of Amble young gun Phil Airey. Last night, United failed to take their chances and Airey was red carded.

However, while it may hurt now, when Newcastle’s youngsters regroup and reflect, they have plenty of positives to mull over this summer. United took control in the first half an hour at and put Villa under plenty of pressure.

Their first glimpse of goal came on seven minutes when Samuel Ameobi toiled down the right channel but his shot was blocked by Derrick Williams.

A minute later Newcastle won a corner and after Samuel Adjei curled the ball in for Conor Newton to flick on, Phil Airey was denied at the back post with another block from Williams.

Ameobi tested Ben Siegrist again on 14 minutes but his effort was gathered by the Villa stopper.

Newcastle should really have charged ahead on 16 minutes when a right-wing cross caused havoc.

First Greg McDermott, son of Terry, fired a powerful shot at Siegrist who parried it as far as Adjei with the Swede’s follow up palmed round the post.