Saints threw away the points today as they suffered a rare defeat at Mayford. Starting brightly we had the ball in Mayford net early on but had it ruled out for offside. After that we lived a little dangerously at the back where Matt was standing in for Martin and a clearly injured Ben could only struggle through to half time. Both Ollie and Ross were having fine games but we were a little soft through the middle and Ollie managed somehow to smuggle one off the line before Saints took the lead. We actually got the ball on the deck strung some passes together and Tom shifted the ball out of his feet and finished well to put us into a deserved lead. Mayford came back at us and Josh pulled off a stunning save but, other than that, we withstood most of everything Mayford could throw at us in the first half.
Kicking uphill in the second half was always going to be a stretch and Alex M, who had moved in to the back four to replace Ben, was mopping up most stuff but eventually a defensive lapse, after an attack of our own broke down, left a player over on our left and - although Josh got a hand to it - he couldn’t keep the resulting shot out. We continued to go looking for goals and Tom showed brilliant strength to hold off a couple of defenders and slot in to give us the lead again. However, with only ten minutes left we once again let ourselves down by not clearing and Mayford levelled. Then disaster struck as again we were exposed on our left when Mayford had attacked and again had a player over. Ross tried twice to get his body there but everyone else was just watching and Mayford took the lead and the game was over.
We have to rid ourselves of these silly errors. Players must take responsibility to do a job and not just hope that others will do it for them. If you see it, do it! We need to recover quickly and get back to winning ways so that we retain a realistic trophy challenge.
Man of the Match - Tom Richards
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