Hertford VI 1 - 0 Luton Town IV

After raising our game the last three outings to match strong opposition, we promptly lowered it again against a rather understrength Luton side. But at least that gave us another close, vibrant (occasionally too vibrant, though Tom Smith brought things nicely back under control with a judiciously timed yellow card) and exciting game and best of all, a win. Our first since we overcame Stevenage by the same margin back in November.

Luton started stronger and Andy Smith made several smart saves in the first quarter. Both defences looked vulnerable and we were soon punching back, Dave Harding giving us the lead on 20 minutes with a good clean strike from out 2nd short corner. Andy again saved us straight afterwards with a tremendous dash off the line when a defensive mix-up gave them a free run at goal. After that we finally sorted our defensive shape out, and Luton rarely got anything on target despite some good spells of pressure and some fairly desperate defence in depth in the last few minutes. Graham White and Dave starred again, with Tom Davies’ defensive work also contributing strongly.

We always looked capable of getting that vital second goal (and missed an open net twice). Ian and Tom has some fine runs, Chris, Aodhan and Aaron hustled their backs and midfield into repeated errors and turnovers, and some of the time we played our good passing game. But despite the space and time we had, we lost too many opportunities through delaying the pass or running straight into tackles.

Can we please be back in ‘raise our game’ mode next week.