With four wins out of their last five, USW looked to continue their hot form into this home tie against a side also coming off of a win.
The early stages of the match were dominated by both sides battling for control in the middle of the park. Misplaced passes denied both USW and Cardiff in the respective final thirds, save for an audacious effort from USW striking the underside of the crossbar four minutes in.
As the game settled, Cardiff tended to hold more of the possession to play a more conservative style while USW elected to quickly move from defence to attack by attempting to play the ball behind Cardiff’s back line, USW looked more threatening early on.
Cardiff had their best chance to break the deadlock 16 minutes in as USW were caught off guard, appealing that the ball had gone out of play. the ball was passed across the face of goal, Nico Barber failed to make contact to what would have been an easy tap-in.
USW took advantage of Cardiff’s wastefulness in front of goal three minutes later. Their early long ball tactics paid dividends as one found Corey McCeary who beat his man and slid the ball under the Cardiff keeper to make the score 1-0. Cardiff would be dealt an additional blow, suffering an injury in the build-up to the goal.
Both teams struggled to create chances from that point, until 40 minutes in, when the USW keeperoverextended to cover a Cardiff attack. The ball was parried directly into the path of Josh Aspinall-Smith, who finished into the empty net.
USW responded almost instantly as another through ball cut through Cardiff’s defence. Freddie Stevens won the race to the ball and in almost a mirror image of USW’s first, slid his effort under the keeper to retake the lead 2-1, which is how the half would end.
The Inbound Observer 