St Alban 0 Braintree 0

[stevea]

I thought the first half was fairly even. Adam Baily-Dennis got sent off with about 5 minutes to go before the break, for a second yellow card. Both of his cards came as a result of clattering players over & the St Albans players making the most of it, but I can see why the ref came to his decisions.
At the start of the second half Rod brought on Michael Alaile in place of Brad Quinton, this did surprise me but it worked well. Braintree totally dominated the second half & had several chances to score but the luck was on St Albans side. Rod continued his good substitution strategy by bringing on Guy & Bryant for Green & Marks to keep the impetus going.
The Braintree old boys now at St Albans, Robbie Martin & Chris Sullivan both failed to impress.
Just a superb display despite the difficult circumstances. Well done one & all.
My man of the match – Nicky Symons.

[cm7]

Sounds like Symons is really doing well for us, not heard a bad word about him as yet. Keep it up Nicky.

Not a surprise that Robbie Martin didnt impress, he looked poor for us last season and was surprised we initially re-signed him.

Overall a decent result considering the circumstances with the red card, bring on the next game.

[1672]

A long and detailed match report in the following St Albans paper:
www.stalbansreview.co.uk/sport/localsport/8346161.Iron_held_as_Saints_show_their_mettle/

I agree with the writer's comment about the petty stoppages and wrong decisions by the ref -easily the worst performance on the field, in my view.

He and the linesman missed a St Albans player who was a good 5 yards offside when well into our half. Also the ref twice left an injured player lying for far too long before stopping play.
Also many stoppages without apparent cause yet penalising many players for tackles which would pass without comment in other games. We ran the match in the second-half, despite only ten men. Many scoring attempts but none went in.

[stevea]

I thought the St Alban's report was rubbish but understandable, when trying to ignore the fact that they were totally out played by 10 men in the second half. He even made stuff up about Rod calming his players down at half time & both sides using the long ball all the time. You expect a bit of bias some times but I am not sure that David Tavener could have really watched the game properly. Perhaps he spent all his time focused on the poor officials rather than the actual play.
I was impressed the way the Rod & the players dealt with the difficult problem of going down to 10 men. This shows the team has real character.

[ontheterrace]

Looks like a really good performance, keeping a clean sheet with 10 men for more than half the game. Not such good news about Bailey-Dennis, though. Not over impressed with him so far. He scored a great goal, but looked slow against Fanrboro and could have been punished by better forwards. A chance for Alaile to make the position his own.

[Stuart R]

The second half was much better and on another day we would have scored a goal, but there keeper did some really good saves. Awful Ref yesterday, he didn't have a clue what he was doing and neither did any of the linesmans.

And I agree Steve, that newspaper report is complete rubbish.