A very muggy Sunday lunchtime saw the U14B’s visiting Waltham Forest. In writing sports reports it’s mandatory to use clichés to keep the punters happy, so I can happily say that the match was literally and metaphorically a game of two halves. Early in first half the tangerines took advantage of a Waltham Forest defensive error to allow Ethan to intercept a long loose pass to open the scoring (after the umpires confirmed that the ball had been touched by Ethan in the ‘D’). The rest of the half ebbed and flowed with Waltham Forest taking advantage of our disorganised structure (possibly due to poor communication between the players) to mount a number of attacks on our goal and winning a number of penalty corners. The result of Coach Mark’s half-time team talk AND a woeful display from us in the opening minutes of the new half (a lack of defensive structure and comical goalkeeping gifting the opposition a goal) appeared to galvanise our squad: from that point onwards St Albans shifted up a gear becoming a well-oiled machine with the defence sending balls into the midfielders who fed our strike force. From that point on Waltham Forest just couldn’t compete with our boys: they barely left their own half and never looked threatening again. A brace for Ethan and one for Simon – it could have been more if it weren’t for the forwards show-boating: remember a goal is a goal no matter what it looks like. Our penalty set-pieces were a joy to watch (once the boys kept it simple it led to our 1-4 victory) and we started to begin our attacks from the wings not the centre. But still worrying questions remain: why did it take us until the 2nd half (and gifting the opposition an equaliser) to start playing as a team and why are the majority of our free-hits still wasted? Mark commented after the match "It was a great result and a fantastic turn around in terms of results from last year. It was great to see so many happy faces at the end of the game. Game by game the boys are improving and great to see everyone contributing to the result".