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Woodbridge Keeps Pace At Top Of East Division After 4-0 Win Over Durham

By League1 Ontario staff, 09/10/16, 5:00PM EDT

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Woodbridge Strikers closed ground on east division leaders, Vaughan Azzurri, after defeating Durham United 4-0 on Friday night. 

"I think the game went well, considering we were missing a lot of players to suspension and injury and had to bring a few new players," said Woodbridge head coach, Peter Pinizzotto. 

"It's not very often that we score four goals either so it was a good result for us," he added. "Although of course they had to play down a man for sixty or sixty-five minutes and it was not easy for them, I thought we played well enough to get our three points."

Woodbridge now sits five points off Vaughan, with four matches still to play. Read all about the Woodbridge's and Vaughan's end of season match patterns and potential outcomes here

Matthew Rios (30') finished a penalty for the Strikers on a play that saw Durham's Tristan Esprit also dismssed from the match.

Strikers' Damion Graham (72'), Christian Cavallini (80') and Eric Soares (90') added three late markers for Woodbridge in the final twenty minutes of play.  

Woodbridge keepers' Matt George (86' mins played) and Nicholas Maffeo (4' mins played) shared the clean sheet.

"I think personally that it was important to get the second goal," said Pinizzotto. "Even though they were a man down they still created enough chances to tie the game and I thought the second goal really hurt them. I thought that was the turning point in the game."

Durham head coach Sanford Carabin agreed with his opposite number's assessment.  

"Obviously when the red card and penalty kick happened, that changed the game," he said. "The funny thing is that even after that happened, we were still the ones controlling the game. We still had the possession and I still thought we would break them down. Even going into the second half that was the message." 

"The second goal took a bit of the stuffing out of us, and we had to change formation, take a little bit more risks as obviously losing two or four nothing made no real difference," Carabin added. 

"We tried to go for it, but overall - as I said to the boys at the end of the game - I'm not upset, I'm not angry, it's a weird feeling."

"We played a really good game, but we lost four nothing. I told them to just try and find whatever little positives you can out of the game and we'll get ready for next Wednesday and see if we can keep it going."