We headed to Pitstone on Saturday with something of a depleted squad which by the end of the game was in a worse state. We were missing Jakk Pursey (Suspension), Peter Maxey, Toby Cribb, Ben Green (Injuries) and Aaron Bhasin illness. We then lost Josh Bird in the warm up which left us with 13. That being said we felt we had a competitive enough squad to get a result against what are one of the best teams in the division. Connor Forman came in for his first team debut.
Whilst the weather was pretty miserable the pitch played very well and the slick surface added to a very good game of football.
Both teams played very good football testing each other’s defences and organisation. We took the lead on 15 minutes when a longer ball from Ross Butler sent Josh away. He took the ball into the area before squaring unselfishly for Tommy Cooke to slide home from 2 yards.
This lead we only held for 6 minutes when sloppy play in the initial phase of defending led to a cross coming in that Albie Hall headed into the left hand corner. 1-1.
We then could have put the game to bed in a 10 minute spell. Initially Josh DS was bought down in the area after a clever through ball from Jamie Cox. Josh stepped up to take the kick and luckily for all involved the net behind the goal stopped the ball reaching Leighton Buzzard station as the kick was ballooned over the bar. A couple of minutes later an exceptional through ball from Mo Deria found Josh clean through where the home keeper made an exceptional save. We then lost Tommy Cooke to hamstring injury. Dan Dewsall coming on in his place. Which forced us into a reshuffle. Shortly afterwards some exceptional football saw Mo put through only to see his shot cannon off the outside of the post.
The remainder of the half saw Pitstone have the majority of the possession as we struggled to adapt the formation following Tommy's departure.
The scores remained 1-1 at half time.
We made some tweaks to our approach at half time which the players executed very well. We came out and almost went 2-1 down straight from kick off when Pitstone got in down our left but we managed to scramble the ball away. At this point we started to enjoy good possession and had some half chances. On 56 minutes we scored what proved to be the winner when a through ball from Scott Valentine was misjudged by the Pitstone centre half and Jacob Hack ran through to left the ball over the keeper.
We continued to enjoy some good chances aided by Albie Hall being sin binned for 10 minutes. Connor was replaced by Carl Bryce and as the game went on chances became less frequent for us as Pitstone chased the game. Liam Jahn made 2 or 3 exceptional saves to keep us in the lead. The players were tireless in their work across the pitch and despite us finishing the game with 10 men when we lost Dan Smith to what looks like a long term knee problem with 7 minutes left we defended resolutely to claim the 3 points.
The game itself was of a very high quality given the conditions and the many changes but the work rate of the lads was exceptional. Man of the Match was Mo Deria who was excellent at Full back, although there were so may good performances across the squad.
A special mention to our new physio (Shaniah Herelle) in her first game who was one of the busiest people dealing with multiple different kinds of injuries and was on first name terms with the ref by the end of the game.