Tring Athletic Reserves 2- 3 Royston Town Reserves

For our final League game of 2017 we welcomed our nemesis Royston Town.
Once again I have to thank all those Committee Members who got there early in their own time to get everything ready.

Playing up the slope we made an excellent start ,playing the ball confidently and realistically should have been 2-0 up within 10 mins only for Royston Town to take advantage of a poor decision in midfield to take the lead.
The half was then spoilt by a potentially serious injury to Jack Seaton after 25 mins on his first game back. It's a possible Acl injury buts let's hope for the best.

Without ever recovering to the standard of our start we had our share of the game and after 40 mins Redha Zekri scored on the far post after a Tom Shaw corner was helped on.

Playing down the slope should have meant we held the upper hand but the game became bitty with neither side dominating. On 60 mins our full back was left 2 on 1 and from the resultant corner kick the ball somehow found its way to the far post where the space occupied by our defence was vacant and a poor goal gave our opponents the lead.
To make matters worse within 10 mins a pass back to custodian Matt Evans was woefully short and the lead was increased to 3-1.
Substitute Joe Naylor then beat 3 defenders, drove into the area and hit the bar only for the ball to bounce out.
Within 5 mins a cross into the area and a set by Joe Naylor resulted in a tidy Tom Shaw finish to cut the deficit .

More sloppy defending and a series of clashes in the area resulted in a penalty award to Royston Town. Matt Evans made an excellent save to his left and on the back of this we reverted to a 4-4-2 to try to get something from the game.

Although Royston hit us on the break we managed to keep them out and in the last minute Ollie Ruttle beat the keeper with a neat lob only for the ball to hit the post and be cleared for a corner from which Ryan McMahon was unable to keep a difficult shot on target and the Ref blew the whistle.

An ultimately disappointing result especially after such a bright start but we go onto Sarratt this Saturday with a 1.30 in the County Cup.

M.Evans. Z.Crawford(N.Holden), D.Steadman,P.Bagatti, J.Seaton ( M.Bulpit)
C.Clay ( J.Shaw) R.Mcmahon,C.Gregory.
T.Shaw,R.Zekri(J.Naylor) J.Sunderland ( O.Ruttle).

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