Earls Barton had a great first half this week where they played a really good passing game of football - refraining from playing the long ball in the air in preference to keeping it on the ground and passing it, what a difference that made.

Dayne scored the opener when Aaron had the ball just inside the halfway area. Aaron played a great ball to Dayne who chested it down with one touch and fired it home in the bottom left hand corner (if this is wrong, blame Dayne, it’s what he told us)!!.

Earls Barton continued to push forward and with a good bit of movement between Addis/Jacob/Aaron/Deanno. Deanno played it back to Aaron for him to receive on the right hand side of the box. Aaron made a good cross that fell between the Corby keeper and a defender and Keets came in from the back post between the two to slot it home. This again from the 2 touch passing that we practice week in week out.

Half time 2 – 0 to Earls Barton.

A bit of order was restored, Rhys turned up and allowed Ryan Brayfield to get back in his usual midfield position (great work again from the stand in goalie).

The second half saw Corby pressing a lot more as Earls Barton backed off a bit and seemed to start panicking when clearing the ball. Quite a lot of the play seemed to be in our own half and we were not releasing the ball as early as we should. I felt on the odd occasion we became too greedy when we should have made the pass. Saying that, the defence again did an excellent job of not letting Corby get back in to the game. A couple of worrying moments when they hit the bar and that obviously could have changed the game, this was coupled by two excellent saves from Rhys.

We still managed to break a few times but couldn’t quite get it right. About 60 minutes in to the game though, we cleared our lines again and the ball came out to Keets on the left hand side of the park, with everyone back still within the Corby half there was only Keets and Kyle forward. So Keets played the ball to Kyle who was sandwiched between two defenders. The ball was spot on and Kyle decided to do as he has been told so many times “don’t give up cause you might get there first”, he didn’t today and when the keeper commited himself and went down on the floor, Kyle had a shot to the side of the keeper and slotted it home for Earls Barton’s third goal.

I want to mention that I asked for some more commitment on challenges from the midfield players and they proved that they can battle just as good as the next man when they have their minds to it.

There were great performances from so many in the first half that I couldn’t pick anyone for man of the match at that stage. That said, I know it might be a bit repetitive but I have to give man of the match this week to Tom Allen again – he has had some outstanding games over the last few weeks and just edged it in the 2nd half.