Hertford VI 1 – 0 Berkhamsted V

A mixture of vets and some very small youths gave us a hard time as we struggled to get any kind of continuity to our play.

Giving Dave, Aodhan and Ian to the 4s, but getting Ewan and Jasper Carr back in return, we has good numbers but were a little unbalanced, with Ewan pushing up to the front and me having to have another go in midfield.

We had the better of most of the game, but our good passages were short and fragmented and rarely got as far as a shot. Berkhamsted moved quickly through midfield but like us struggled to string more than three or four passes together without giving the ball away. It was looking like one of those games when nobody would get close to scoring, the short corner count only got to 1 each, and it turned in the end on two incidents.

Just before half time Berko were already celebrating their first goal as their striker ran in on the far post with Andy out of position, when a full length dive from your captain deflected the ball wide of the post and dumped the attacker on his backside in the goal instead.

With 50 minutes played we finally strung all the parts together, playing the ball quickly out of defence down the right, for Richard, Ewan and Adam to exchange passes, press into the D, and pull the ball back for Matt to cream a shot into the top of the netting.

Berkhamsted threw players forward but our defence held out stubbornly if untidily, and we failed to make anything of a number of breaks to build on the lead.

Everybody made some good contributions and there were plenty of very neat, if brief, passages of play. We just need to join them all together…….

MotM goes to Andy for another stalwart display at the back of the diamond.