Everton FC 3, Carlisle Utd 1: James Vaughan's hard work shows he's no ordinary Jo

Jan 4 2010 Chris Beesley

THIRD round ties of the FA Cup against determined lower division opposition are not days for shrinking violets. So it was fitting that two of Goodison Park’s most determined fighters James Vaughan and Tim Cahill inspired Everton to victory over gritty Carlisle United.

Despite limping off against Burnley just five days earlier, only returning to training 24 hours before the League One side’s visit and seemingly playing through the pain barrier throughout the game, David Moyes’ ‘Boxing Kangaroo’ Cahill came up trumps again with yet another crucial goal – his 50th for the club.

Amazingly, it was the first time in over four-and-a-half years – since Vaughan became the youngest goalscorer in Premier League history on his Everton debut – that the pair had netted in the same game. That damning statistic is largely due to the horrific catalogue of injuries the Birmingham-born striker has endured since, including three long term absences with knee injuries, a severed artery in the foot and a dislocated shoulder in a pre-season friendly.

A player who has suffered more damage than most players could expect during their entire career, Vaughan, now 21, continues to put his body on the line every time he gets to wear the royal blue jersey.

Despite playing the game at the highest level, Vaughan continues to maraud around like a fearless Sunday League centre-forward and in that respect he is a glorious throwback to frontmen of a bygone era like Dave Hickson who declared: "I’d break every bone in my body for all the other clubs I played for, but I’d die for Everton."

The same could not be said for a certain estranged member of David Moyes’ forward line – Jo – with the Scot confirming that there is unlikely to be any way for him to work his way back into his plans, even with an apology, after the on-loan Manchester City man went AWOL to his native Brazil during the busy festive period.

It seems impossible to imagine the languid South American gambling to intercept Adam Clayton’s slack back pass in the way Vaughan did to open the scoring or closing down an opposition full-back at breakneck speed just to win a throw-in.

A series of strikes in comfortable wins during his early days at Goodison masked the glaring deficiencies in the former CSKA Moscow man’s game but just two goals in his last 29 outings – both in 4-0 strolls – showed he was failing on the pitch even before his untimely breach of club discipline proved the final straw for his manager.

And on a day when the hosts were in desperate need of warriors to step up to the plate, Evertonians would have feared he’d have been a prime candidate to ‘go missing’.

Having seen his side lose their previous two FA Cup third round ties at Goodison to Blackburn (4-1 in 2007) and Oldham (1-0 in 2008) and suffered a humbling in his first experience of this stage of the competition at Shrewsbury (2-1 in 2003), Moyes, who steered the club to their first cup final in 14 years last season, named his strongest possible side with just two changes to the starting line- up from the Burnley game with returning skipper Phil Neville replacing the injured Leon Osman – Everton’s third round hero at Macclesfield 12 months ago – in midfield and Vaughan coming in for Ayegbeni Yakubu with the Nigerian having departed in preparation for the African Cup of Nations.

The Cumbrians, buoyed by over 6,000 travelling fans, went into the game on the back of a seven-match unbeaten run but their vociferous support was temporarily silenced after 12 minutes when a slack back pass by Adam Clayton, while being harried by Neville, was intercepted by Vaughan, who calmly rounded goalkeeper Adam Collin to net in front of the Gwladys Street for the second time in six days.