Newcastle United’s Under-21s secured a dramatic penalty shootout win over League One side Mansfield Town in the Vertu Trophy, keeping the lads’ hopes of progressing from the group stage alive.
The young Mags fielded a strong lineup on Tuesday night, which included Park Seung-Soo, Sean Neave, Miodrag Pivas and captain Cathal Heffernan.
Having lost our opening group game against Huddersfield, defeat on Tuesday would have guaranteed our exit from the competition.
But it now means we will have to beat League Two side Harrogate Town, and hope that Mansfield do us a favour and beat Huddersfield, if we want to qualify for the next stage of the competition.
Before we get to our match report below, watch Seung-Soo’s stunning pass to unlock the door and level the score at 2-2 before Newcastle won on penalties:
🇰🇷 Seung-Soo Park’s assist for #NUFC under-21s last night 😮💨
— NUFCBlog.co.uk (@NUFCblogcouk) October 16, 2025
Dramatic scenes at Field Mill for Young Mags
Heffernan has been talked about as a future captain of the senior side in the making, and it was the U-21s leader that opened the scoring for us, latching onto a loose ball in the box and placing it past Owen Mason in the Mansfield net.
But the much-fancied League One side soon showed their quality, Max Dickov’s powerful shot restoring parity in the 24th minute, whilst Don Dwyer almost made it 2-1 on the stroke of halftime, United goalkeeper James Taylor producing a big save to stop the header going in.
Just after the hour mark however, our resilient defence was breached once again: this time a header from Finn Flanagan beat Taylor and made it 2-1 to the hosts.
We spent the rest of the game pushing for an equaliser, with Sam Alabi coming close swiftly after coming on, once stopped by Mason, and coming agonisingly close with a deflected effort that went just wide.
But our persistence was soon rewarded in stoppage time. A simply sublime pass from Park found Charlie McArthur bombing forward, before the fullback’s deep cross was deflected in off Ollie Taylor to make it 2-2 and send the game to penalties!
Crucial bonus point won on penalties
In the competition, points are still shared for a draw, but a special bonus point can be awarded if a team wins a subsequent penalty shootout.
Taking our spot picks first, each of Neave, Alabi, Joe Brayson and Park found the back of the net before McArthur sealed a 5-3 shootout win and that extra point for Newcastle’s Young Mags.
