Leyton Orient 2

Crystal Palace 4

(Worthington Cup first round)

FOR AN opening foray into this year's Worthington Cup, hosting Crystal Palace was always going to be a difficult proposition for Leyton Orient.

Last year the Eagles dumped Sunderland and cup-holders Leicester out of the competition and came close to ending Liverpool's treble cup dream before Gerrard Houllier's head had even hit the pillow.

So it proved on Tuesday night as Palace's cup pedigree, especially that of Republic of Ireland striker Clinton Morrison, proved too much for a battling Leyton Orient.

A comparativly even first half was followed by rip-roaring second-half performance from the Eagles, during which their foward partnership of Morrison and ex-Arsenal trainee Tommy Black asked too many questions of a stuttering Orient defence.

Before the game there was an immaculately observed one-minute silence in memory of former Orient stopper Les Sealy. The only voluable infractions coming from the children in the playground outside the ground, perhaps they were all Tottenham fans in the making.

There was a cagey start to the action as the teams felt eachother out. The O's had a couple of half-chances but Palace keeper Alex Kolinko wasn't really tested until a 20-yard drive from Houghton drew a good stop from the Lativian international.

Seconds later Orient fans were to get a glimpse of their number-one tormentor for the evening, the recently up-for-the-craic Morrison, as he combined well with Julian Grey on the left wing and tested Ashley Bayes with a header from five yards.

It was on 36 minutes that the O's took the lead when a well placed pass from Scott Oakes found Geoff Minton, whose lob/shot sailed over the stranded Kolinko into the back of the net.

On 43 minutes Palace drew level when a mazy Morrison run from the right hand side of the box culminated in a side-footed shot past Bayes into the net.

Within ninety seconds O's fans got to find out why Kolinko has earned the "calamity" tag usually resvered for David James, when he rushed out to the edge of the box to deflect a shot to the feet of Scott Houghton, whose up-and-under chip somehow beat both Kolinko and Dean Austin to the line to send Orient in at the half time break 2-1 up.

But if the first half was a pretty even affair, the two-divsion gap between the sides was clearly evident in the second.

Within a minute the Morrison-Gray combination again produced a good chance on goal, this time for Gray, and there was a feeling that Orient's one-goal lead was not going to be enough.

Ten minutes later this proved to be the case as Morrison skinned two defenders to test Bayes with a shot that he could only deflect into the path of Black, who stroked the ball home to bring parity to the scoreline.

Twenty minutes into the second half O's captain Dean Smith could have changed the face of the game when his run from the O's box culminated in a 25-yard scorcher that, had it been hit any harder, would probably have forced Barry Hearn into forking out for a new cross-bar.

The sight of their talismanic captain going so close lifted the Orient fans and when, within a minute, a 20-yard shot from Minton also dented the woodwork there was certainly an aura of expectancy round the ground.

But Morrison had already demonstrated his class for much of the second half and when he back-heeled a skewed shot from Steven Thompson past Ashley Bayes for his second goal on 84 minutes it was all over for Orient.

Palace then started to play keep-ball, something which hardly endeared them to the home fans, but Black still found time in the 87th minute to surge past two defenders and side-foot the ball home from one-yard out to give Steve Bruce's side a victory their second half performance clearly merited.

By.Alistair Strayton