Adam O’Reilly believes that the hard work put in on the training ground, and on the pitch at Deepdale, contributed to the PNE U18s success in the FA Youth Cup.
North End’s academy side ran out comfortable 3-0 winner over Norwich City under the lights in PR1, bridging the gap of the category one setup at Carrow Road.
U18s captain O’Reilly thinks that the preparation, matched with the team’s high work rate, helped them to victory.
Speaking to iFollowPNE, he said: “The lads worked unbelievably hard to get that win and to get a clean sheet just topped it off - we worked as hard as we could.
“We’ve been working on that for the last couple of weeks, just looking at playing Norwich and how they play, thankfully everything worked out on the pitch and we won the game.”
The midfielder scored the opening goal, after 34 minutes, courtesy of a lot of leg work from Louis Potts breaking from the right.
Potts got a goal of his own 20 minutes from time, with Lewis Earl nodding home before the interval too.
O’Reilly was full of praise for his teammates and their attitudes towards the game.
“Lewis to get up there, it was an excellent header. It just shows the determination that he has, and the rest of the lads have, to go and win that ball.
“Pottsy again is doing very well to get into those position and then to top it all off with a good finish. The ref made a good decision as well so we’re happy with that.
“We were working on that in training, getting the ball in wide areas and putting it in, thankfully it happened on the pitch and it went in so I’m happy with that.”
The U18s will be back at Deepdale for the next round of the FA Youth Cup, already having been drawn against Bury.
The Irishman is looking forward to being back in front of the North End fans.
“I’m looking forward to that and so are the other lads. We can go out and show our stuff again and prove to a bigger audience that we can play football and show what we can do.”
You can watch the full interview with Adam O’Reilly by clicking on the video above.