Shefford & Sandy IV 3 - 1 Hertford VI

A frustrating game where we failed to build on last week’s progress. The five changes didn’t help, but we should be used to that by now. Usual gripes. Headless chicken passing, holding onto the ball too long, not keeping close enough to our opponents when we’re marking. With that basic discipline and a 5% step up in energy and we would have been in charge.

Sandy edged the first quarter without looking particularly threatening until we failed to clear a short corner and found ourselves one down. We had a few good forays into their 23 with Ian and Ewan the shining lights, but couldn’t find much consistency. Clive was kept busy on goal, defence was ugly but generally effective, Richard making a big contribution tracking back from left mid, but we were giving the ball straight back to then far too much for comfort.

We woke up at half time, Graham White and Dave got a good foothold in midfield and a smart ball from Graham out wide to Jon Durbin produced a crashing cross which Ian slammed home, only to see it disallowed after a long consultation between the umpires. Graham went solo a few minutes later and beat the keeper through a crowded D to bring us level.

We couldn’t keep it up. Sandy pushed their big guns forward, we got disorganised at the back and left a man unmarked and unchallenged at the top of the D. We kept working through the last quarter and drew a couple of good saves from their keeper, but poor passing continued to let us down and the final goal went to Sandy.

We will have to be a lot better next week.