Date | Saturday 27 October 2012 |
Match | Chertsey Town v Royston Town |
Competition | Evo-Stik League Southern: Central Division One |
Result | Won 2-1 |
Royston Scorers | Malins, Standen |
Attendance | 85 |
Crows MoM | Will Norris |
Royston Town secured all three points away to lowly Chertsey Town, on a particularly poor playing surface, taking their unbeaten league run to six games and moving up to an impressive third place in the table.
After a committed, but non-eventful opening, the Crows were gifted a goal on 8 minutes when a speculative overhead Ross Collins’ cross was spilled by Chertsey’s keeper Justin Gray and Tommy Malins was on hand to prod home.
This spurred the home side into action and they had a positive ten minute period of play and on 17 minutes they got their reward. A right-wing over-lapping run by Rob Carr produced a good cross and whilst the Royston defenders laboured to clear the loose ball, Lewis Fostick seized the moment and sent the ball goal-ward leaving Royston’s Will Norris scrabbling in vain to stop it creeping over the line for a soft equaliser. Unperturbed, Royston’s young keeper made a superb save minutes later when he spread himself to block from point-blank distance to deny Chertsey a second.
Royston regrouped and had the better of the remaining first half but could not change the 1-1 score-line at the break.
The Crows came out the livelier in the second half and Chertsey seemed rattled with this shift in tempo and a lack of discipline from the home side saw a string of cheap free-kicks conceded. A fine through ball on the hour by Sam Spencer was collected by Kaan Fehmi but his shot went just wide of the post.
Carl Edwards was replaced by the more attacking Ryan Lockett on 53 minutes as Duncan Easley and Martin Paine left no-one in any doubt that they had come to win this match and on 70 minutes Lockett’s pass found Malins who crossed deep for Fehmi to head agonisingly wide.
Man of the match Norris was once again was called into important action and he made another excellent stop, this time with his feet, to deny the home side the impetus.
The game was won on 77 minutes following a foul on Lee Wilson, Joe De La Salle took a quick free-kick drilling the ball wide left and Lockett sent over a driven cross for Matt Standen to head home to seal an overall deserved, but tricky, win for Royston.
Team: Norris, Parr, Wilson, Bradshaw, De La Salle, Spencer, Collins (c), Edwards (Lockett, 53), Standen, Fehmi (Robins, 84), Malins.