What a thouroughly entertaining work out this friendly fixture with Grendon Rangers proved to be.Today we welcomed back Keiron Carr to the club and his performance was one of the many shining lights in the game. Both Keiron and Thomas Young were exceptional on the flanks and gave our visitors an uncomfortable afternoon.The supply to our wingers was a big improvement on the previous week with Lewis and Ned digging the ball out of the middle and spraying passes all over the pitch.After conceding an early goal our defensive line of Callum, Owen, Ollie and Joe got organised and began to snuff out any further threats for almost the entire first half. On the few times they did breach our back line Isaac was in commanding form and showed a confident pair of hands. It's great to see how much Isaac has worked to improve his distribution with some great throw outs and fine clearances.We took barely a minute to even the scores when George rattled home a spectacular drive after a flowing build up starting with Ollie at the back going via Keiron to Ned onto George and into the net. Tom Kinch dived in where it hurts to put us in front after some dogged work from Lewis on the edge of the Rangers box. The second sat-nav twin(tom young) finished off another free-flowing move with with a delightful half volley into the roof of the net, Keiron dazzled his marker down the right and flighted a superb cross for Youngy to bury home. On the stroke of half-time Youngy repaid the compliment with an equally impressive through ball over the heads of all but one of the Grendon defenders. The defender must have felt he had done the job with his last ditch clearance but Keiron kept the ball alive and lobbed the keeper to make it a scoring return on his first game back.
After recieving their customary rollickin the Grendon boys came out fired up after the interval. After withstanding some early pressure we then went back on the offensive. Alex cut out a clearnce and slipped the ball down the line to Owen, now playing wide on the right, Owen spotted George making his run toward the box and fed a great pass into his stride. From a very difficult angle George still managed to arrow a wicked drive over the shocked keepers head and give us our fifth of the game.With players coming and going we did seem to lose our way a little and Grendon sensed a mini revival. After pulling a goal back to make it five -two the visitors were awarded a penalty. Isaac held his nerve and the ball to deny the striker a goal. At the other end Owen was close to breaking his duck for the season when he got on the end of another fine Carr cross and Harry just couldn't force the ball home but seemed to enjoy the pile-on that then followed with the keeper and defender falling on top of him. Grendon managed a third when the same player ghosted in behind our back line for his hatrick. It was good to see us regroup and finish the match on a high. Youngy and Keiron combined down the left and Thomas picked out our centreforward Ollie ...yes Ollie steaming in to the front post and tucking the ball past the keeper to give us a fine 6-3 victory. Isaac just pipped Keiron, Youngy and George for the man-of-the-match award with safe handling, fine shot stopping and a confident all round performance. We even outshone Grendon in the fun penalty shoot-out after the game winning 10-6 approx. I lost count. Great day well done.
