South Shields 0 Forest Green 2
Connor Wickham’s sumptuous lob from inside the centre circle helped Forest Green negate a potential FA Cup first-round banana skin at non-league South Shields.
Kevin Phillips’ South Shields were unable to pull off an FA Cup upset as a Wickham brace saw the seventh-tier outfit beaten 2-0 at the 1st Cloud Arena.
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The 29-year-old forward opened the scoring for Forest Green on 28 minutes with a header from a delicious Corey O’Keeffe cross.
His second goal oozed Premier League quality. Picking the ball up deep into stoppage-time, the former Sunderland and Sheffield Wednesday striker struck an audacious lob from around the halfway line which ended up in the back of the net after it looped over the back-peddling South Shields keeper Myles Boney.
“He [Boney] wasn’t really that far off his line when I did it,” Wickham told the BBC.
“He was probably on the penalty spot. It’s one of them, you could try it probably another 100 times and it might not come off but thankfully today it did. I’ll have to try it another 100 times now!”
In recent years the FA Cup and Forest Green haven’t been happy bedfellows, this was their first since they beat Billericay 4-0 in the first round in 2019.
