Stevenage V 2 - 1 Hertford VI

We never seem to play well at John Henry Newman, but this time, in bitter cold with gentle snowfall, we hit new levels of mediocrity. We were a bit unbalanced, missing Tom, Graham White and Dave Harding so fielding a makeshift midfield with several of us out of position, and Graham Locker and Jon returning from injury, but that can't excuse us doing almost nothing right for the first 15 minutes as we went 1 - 0 down to a veteran Stevenage line up who had little to offer but sensible positioning and accurate passing to their own players. Maybe we should have copied them?

Luckily they weren't too good at shooting on target, and in the 2nd quarter, with Ian leading the way with some powerful running, we started to get the upper hand and got level as DPJ tucked in Ian's cross from the byline on 20 minutes.

We didn't build on that, and the 2nd half was evenly matched at a low level, with one neat short corner conversion being the difference between two teams that both allowed their opponents plenty of scoring opportunities and spurned their own.

Bright spots were Ian's succession of stunning runs, a number of very sharp saves from Andy, and DPJ's calm finish for his first goal since the same fixture back in Jan 2016 .

Must try to do better next week....