Last updated at 12:04, Wednesday, 25 July 2012

Durham City 0 Carlisle United 3: Carlisle United’s latest bid to become the authentic League One package took them to Durham’s artificial pitch last night, on which Mark Beck galloped clear as the individual high-achiever of the Blues’ first four pre-season workouts.

Mark Beck

Beck, the latest tall centre-forward to emerge from the Blues’ youth system, has now scored seven against successive non-league opponents since Greg Abbott’s players clocked back on.

The challenges will now get bigger and harder for the teenage striker but this burst of goals, including a hat-trick here, will surely have earned Beck a little closer scrutiny from Abbott as the manager sifts through his options for the coming campaign.

Carlisle’s victory here was predictable enough, the test one of endurance rather than polished technique on the Northern League club’s 3G surface, but 18-year-old Beck did his prospects no damage by nodding one goal in the 19th minute, converting a penalty seven minutes before half-time and then slotting home a confident third early in the second half.

His first, a climbing header convincingly buried, was supplied by Dave Symington, another of last night’s brighter players and, like Beck, in his first year out of Eric Kinder’s youth ranks.

A player often has more to lose than to gain from these mainly low-key tests, but in fronting up so sharply Beck, Symington and the encouraging Brad Potts further back may have earned themselves some decent minutes in United’s more demanding friendlies, with St Mirren starting the countdown in earnest to 2012/13 when they head down to Brunton Park from the SPL this Friday.

On this occasion, the freshers stood out more noticeably than the trialists at whom Abbott is taking an extended view. Ryan Donaldson, the latest, earned the penalty from which Beck dispatched his second goal, while Alessio Bugno, Dale Hopson and Mark Kerr were as competent as they needed to be without fully catching fire.

But the eye snagged on Beck, who is not the first young United forward to fill his boots in pre-season – Andy Cook and Gary Madine have been here before – and whose challenge is eventually to follow the latter into first-team prominence. Whether Bugno, Kerr, Donaldson, Hopson and Jonathan Meades (another trialist who did not figure last night) can follow the same path is a question Abbott is not yet ready to answer; not until all the hopefuls have been examined by better teams. Middlesbrough and Morecambe follow the St Mirren test, though Jim McAlister and Aaran Taylor, two more recently under Abbott’s eye, are no longer in the running for deals.

Here, on a pitch still bearing the previous night’s American Football markings, United made most of the significant yards. As Liam Noble exerted control from midfield, Hopson and Donaldson had early shots blocked and Symington displayed promise and pace down the left.

In the 18th minute, Donaldson – playing as a right-sided attacker – side-footed a Symington cross wide, but moments later Beck soared to score. After Jack Pounder’s footing failed him after a promising run for the hosts, Hopson then wasted a good chance to make it 2-0, skying a Donaldson pull-back. Then the latter man, recently released by Newcastle, was too nifty for Dan Madden in the box, falling under the defender’s challenge and enabling the confident Beck to score from 12 yards, the ball bouncing in off the post.

Seconds on and Noble set up Beck’s first hat-trick chance, but keeper James Winter bravely denied the sliding striker. But a slotted finish in the 55th minute enabled the teenager to secure his treble at a time when new signing Mike Edwards was going through the gears as a second-half sub (he and Peter Murphy replaced Danny Livesey and Frank Simek at half-time, making up a steady 45 minutes each for the experienced defenders).

Durham, after a series of substitutions, always showed decent appetite, never more so than when Andrew Stephenson tested Mark Gillespie’s agility from distance. United then worked some handy crossing chances for Potts and Bugno, whose fluent running style grew increasingly easy on the eye but whose defensive qualities must now be studied when higher-class wingers raid United’s left side.

The flow of chances was stemmed a little by the Northern League side as the two altered teams went about their second-half work, though one Potts cross deserved better than Symington’s airborne finish at the back post, and Hopson’s late curler might have extended Winter more meaningfully.

The Blues men not to figure here included Lee Miller, Chris Chantler, Matty Robson, Danny Cadamarteri, Paul Thirlwell, Adam Collin, Paddy Madden and Rory Loy, who is not yet deemed ready for his first summer outing after his long absence with a broken leg.

Most of those senior figures can expect an airing against St Mirren when Brunton Park gets its first look at Abbott’s new recruits and his latest cluster of wandering hopefuls; not to mention the rising prospects already on the books, of which the goal-greedy Beck is becoming the most prominent.

Carlisle United: Gillespie, Simek (Murphy 46), Bugno, Livesey (Edwards 46), Potts, Noble (Berrett 64), Kerr, Hopson, Symington, Donaldson, Beck. Not used: Robson, Collin.

Goals: Beck 19, 38pen, 55.

First published at 11:26, Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk