South Yorkshire Times, December 15, 1951
Denaby United 0 Scunthorpe Utd Reserves 1
Denaby Do Well
In Difficult Conditions
With heavy rain, gate and sticky mud, conditions at Tickhill Square on Saturday were the worst we have had this season.
Scunthorpe Reserves beat Denaby by a tenth minute goal headed by centre-forward HALL but a drawn game would have been a much more satisfactory result.
Scunthorpe served up some astonishingly fast-moving thrusts into Denaby territory, but they never entirely wrested the initiative. United’s display on Saturday must rank as one of their best this season for in the first difficult half they were battling against both a hard shooting Scunthorpe and the gale and driving rain indeed a tough double adversary.
What excellent service Mervyn Law consistently gives to United! He and Rowney were the pair principally responsible for diminishing Scunthorpe goal threats in this first half, by the simple maxim of offering attack as the best form of defence. They were constantly endeavouring to open the I way for deep thrusts into the Scunthorpe lines, and one spectacular Rowney “solo” gave Sarson the ball to make possible a shot which Malan held only with difficulty .But Scunthorpe were luckiest when Babes thundered across goal to kick what seemed a “cert” off the goal-line with inches to spare. That luck had been counterbalanced at the other end with an awkward lob from Thompson which seemed safe enough but which, in fact, struck the cross bar, was pushed out to the right, pounced on again by Thompson and pushed across an open Denaby goalmouth with Benson and Hall just a couple of feet out of effective range. But Scunthorpe’s luck held in the second half too, when United had more than one near miss.
A goal margin reverse, but no cause for worry. Cooling was obviously ill at ease in his unaccustomed role of right full back, deputising for Harston, and his effectiveness in the half hack line was missed. With that extra weight United might just have turned the scale.