Goals from Tom Maddison and Tyler Blake saw Carlton Town beat the Nottingham Forest youth side in a testing pre-season encounter at Stoke Lane, writes Alan Murphy
The Millers fielded a strong side with an eye on Wednesday night’s FA Cup tie against Loughborough University. In the first half they threatened to overwhelm their opponents who played some neat football but looked unable to deal with the physicality of the game.
In front of a crowd of 150 at Carlton’s first ever all-ticket fixture Carlton took the lead on 16 minutes when Aaron Opoku was fouled in the area by Luke Boland and Tom Maddison converted the penalty.
Forest goalkeeper Alex Akers had to go off on 30 minutes following a collision with Opoku with both scrambling for a loose ball and the first task of his replacement Daniel Moore was to pick the ball out of the net as Carlton scored a second when Blake headed home a Lawrence Gorman corner.
Jack Steggles made a smart save in the opening minute of the second half as Forest went at Carlton from the whistle and as the game wore on it was the youngsters who looked the more threatening.
Carlton almost made it 3-0 on 78 minutes when Daryll Thomas headed a Gorman cross against the post but with 20 seconds Forest pulled a goal back. They broke at pace and Dale Taylor hit a peach of a shot from the edge of the box into Toby Randall’s top corner.
Worse was to come for Randall, who’d only been on the pitch a few minutes, when an underhit back pass from Maddison saw Randall exposed and when he handled the ball outside the area to stop a Forest equaliser the red card that followed was inevitable.
Thomas took over between the sticks for the remaining six minutes of the game and although Forest created a couple of chances they were unable to draw level.
Carlton Town: Steggles (Toby Randall 74), Gorman, Brown (Sturgess 77), Ball (Deft 77), Moore, Maddison, Elliott (Bako 34), Clark (Mabonga 65), Opoku (Thomas 68), Blake, Davie (J Smith 74).
Goals: Maddison 16 (pen), Blake 32; Dale Taylor 78
