Town made the short trip to Harlow on Saturday to take on Potter Street. The injury crisis continued when on the plus side, Town welcomed back Lee Humphrey, who had been missing for several weeks but were then deprived the services of top scorer Ben Polley who failed a late fitness test leaving Town with just 11 fully fit players and forcing a change in formation. Just to add to the fun Ready twisted his ankle in the warm up : are you OK Ready I nervously enquired - "yeah I'm fine I'll strap it up" was the typical and expected response of the "warrior".

The game kicked off and it was clear from the very first minute that the absolutely dreadful playing surface would make any attempt to get the ball down and try to play football absolutely pointless. Both teams struggled to string together any passes and an incredibly tedious game, full of errors, developed which to be frank was painful to watch and probably painful to play in. After 15 mins Street, who had adapted better to the conditions, began to bombard Towns defence with long balls that were comfortably dealt with by Ready and new signing Dave Martin who looks a real "find". Town were caught out a few times in midfield when trying to play football - silly old us !!! but the game meandered on with neither team looking like creating any chances at all. Then after 20 mins, out of the blue, Street took the lead when a defensive header fell straight to a Street player who fired home from the edge of the box, 1-0. The rest of the half passed with nothing of note happening as players became more and more suspicious of the playing surface and resorted to "lumping it" rather than risk making a mistake - at half time it was thought that Town needed to up the work rate and the less time we give Street on the ball the better and to make life as difficult as possible.

The second half kicked off and the game continued in much the same fashion with the majority of play taking place in the midfield with neither keeper being called upon and chances were non existent at both ends. The Town defence continued to look solid but creating any chances at the other end was proving difficult and Town only really had a couple of long range efforts and the Street keeper was not troubled. With 20 mins left Ben Polley was introduced in place of Headon who was struggling with various knocks. Still Town huffed and puffed without looking threatening and the flow (if there was any) of the game wasn't helped when every time the ball went out of play, the wind blew it miles away and there seemed to be some reluctance to get the second ball on, all very frustrating . With 10 mins left Street scored a second goal, game over, 2-0.

To summarise this was a "Nothing game" - Street probably just about deserved the 3 points on the day, and look a decent side who would benefit from playing on a decent surface but in all honesty the dreadful state of the pitch, complete with tyre mark gouges, made the whole game a total lottery and almost a waste of an afternoon. Player of the match this week is Dave Martin who looks to be a very good signing.

El Col