Town played host to Potter Street on another lovely sunny Tuesday evening for their penultimate league game of the season. They welcomed back Andy Allen, from his extended vacation, who took his place on the bench alongside Matt Macedo and Ready as an unchanged side from the previous week against Epping was announced.

The game started and almost straight away Street put the Town defence under pressure and after just 4 minutes they took the lead when a striker converted a rebound after an initial fine save by Chris Neal in the Town goal, 0-1. This didn’t serve to wake Town up and for the first 30 minutes it was embarrassingly one sided with Street completely dominant and after 20 minutes they scored again to go 2 up, again following another Chris Neal save when the Street player reacted quickly to score whilst the Town players collectively did passable impersonations of statues. We then witnessed Street’s excellent, but none the less 5 feet 3 inch winger, winning various headers all over the pitch, such was Towns lethargy. Then out of the blue Town got themselves a lifeline when Polley picked the ball up on the left hand side of the box and curled a beauty into the top corner 1-2. Town then had their best, and only real spell of the game, and they dominated the closing 15 minutes of the half and made one or two half chances. Jeater cut in from the right but his cross was scrambled away to safety just in the nick of time before it reached the a Town forward for an easy tap in and Polley hit a fierce volley from the edge of the box that hit the post with the keeper a spectator. Half time arrived and although they had been completely outplayed in the first 30 minutes they had rallied and dominated the final 15 minutes so needed to build on this.

When the second half kicked off the opening 10 minutes were fairly even but then Town conceded a penalty which Chris Neal brilliantly saved to keep Town in the game. Unfortunately this was about as good as it got for Town as again the remainder of the game was played out almost exclusively in Towns half and the fact that Street only scored 3 more goals is due almost entirely to the brilliance of Chris Neal in the Town goal who made save after save and single handidly kept the score line respectable. The final whistle went with Street running out very, very comfortable winners.

So overall a disappointing and very much below par (politest phrase I could think of) performance especially bearing in mind Towns good run of results recently. The lack of urgency is difficult to explain given the importance of the game and the need for 3 points, but it has to be said that this was probably the most powerful performance we have come up against all season, and there can be absolutely no doubt that this Potter Street line up would not be anywhere near the bottom end of the league and I would go as far as to say that they would be challenging for the title. Just a shame from our point of view that we had to play them when these players were available but that’s how the cookie crumbles I suppose. We now have one “must win” game left against fellow relegation fighters Epping Town where we will need to perform considerably better and show some character, which was sadly missing in this performance. Player of the match today is Chris Neal who was quite outstanding and prevented a cricket score.

El Col