Sat 24th Nov 2018
League
Fleet Spurs FC 2-8 TAFC Development team
TAFC goals: Jack Read (4), Joe Naylor (4)
Suburban League -Central.
Fleet Spurs Res. 2-8 Tring Athletic Res.
To those of you who go onto Manage sides once you can't play anymore, there is a truism which is that " players win games but it's Managers that lose them" .
As in all honesty we have had problems all season in midfield it was decided to change the way we played today. As a result only twice was the ball rolled from keeper Luke Priestley to either full back and those passes, as were all of Luke's kicks, were played long into our strong front 4 .
The back 3 of Will Mullarkey, Matt Stacey and Scott Henderson were generally good in their defensive duties and distribution inc a first minute pass into Joe Naylor who moved the ball onto Jack Read who scored with a "shot" that squirmed under the keeper.
In midfield Will Salmon (who still has a tendency of diving in) and Miles Blunsom (who was excellent - ask him) generally kept their opposition under control.
In front of the them, Teddie Paul, under strict instruction to get on the second ball and drop in when Fleet Spurs had the ball, had his best game in a while.
Jack Read scored his and our second on 7 mins and we looked to have things under control.
The front 4 of Joe Naylor,Jack Read , Jack Sunderland and Frankie Hercules looked like taking advantage of every attack with Jack Read cleverly dropping allowing the other 3 to get at the opposition or Frankie Hercules tucking into midfield to allow space out wide.
The first time Fleet Spurs were allowed to string a few passes together they got back in the game as a partial consequence of poor decision making.
Our opponents had a relatively decent spell but we put a halt to this with Jack Read completing his hat trick.
In truth we should have scored at least 3 more and those from relatively simple chances.
Joe Naylor then got in on the act and a brace from him gave us a convincing but worthy 5-1 half time lead.
Playing up the slope and with a commanding lead it was perhaps not surprising that our standards dropped . After 10 mins Jack Read lost the ball on the half way line and our midfield who had against the game plan, run in behind allowing Fleet Spurs to narrow the deficit. They persisted in bombarding our back 3 with long passes which we generally, if not sometimes messily, dealt with.
The wind was taken out of their wings when one if many Jack Sunderland crosses was converted at the far post by Jack Read.
Quite how we only got 2 more goals beggars belief as we found loads and loads of ways NOT to hit the target.
2 tidy finishes from The Silent Assasin, took his total for today to 4 and 16 in 13 games for the season. Jack Read has 10 in 4.
Sub Luke Cestrone played his part over the last 25 mins and a 90 mile journey to and from Tring was almost enjoyable..
Congratulations to today's squad who coped with the lack of numbers ( not happy!!) to get back up the table.
L.Priestley. W.Mullarkey,M.Stacey,S.Henderson. W.Salmon, M.Blunsom,T.Paul, F.Hercules(L.Cesterone) J.Sunderland, J.Read,J.Naylor.