Hitting top form at just the right time
BACK in September, we went to Crawley and were embarrassed by our performance, Crawley were rubbish but we were worse, beaten 3-2 by a team low on confidence.
Jump forward to last Tuesday and County got their revenge, it wasn’t pretty, at times it was awful but when the chips were down County rose to the challenge.
The first half was possibly one of the worse we’ve seen so far this season, both sides seemed intent on giving the ball away, (far too often in County’s case), every player in a blue shirt was guilty at some point, the opening goal came because of another loose pass that resulted in a rash challenge and a free kick that was superbly struck past Ben Hinchliffe.
Now, we have in our team Isaac “Tanto” Olaofe, a young man with pace aplenty and what a threat he is.
Chasing and winning a lost ball, beats the keeper and sets up Kyle Wootton for his first of the night.
The second half was better, we gradually took control and really it was no surprise when Chris Hussey crossed in a delightful ball for Kyle to head brilliantly over the stranded keeper to give us the win over a team that look far too good to be 22nd in the division.
The second game of the week was supposed to be much harder, Stevenage, sitting second in the division, have a reputation of being a physical team and there were times in the game when they practised the dark arts, especially on Tanto, they did anything and everything to stop him using his speed to get past them.
On the whole I thought Crawley were the better of the two sides, certainly football wise!
Stevenage hardly had a decent goal chance all game while we were on the front foot from the first minute and had some great opportunities though we had to wait half an hour before Will Collar turned in a Hippolyte cross in a crowded penalty box.
The second half continued in the same vein, County applied the pressure while Stevenage just hoped for a chance.
As the game progressed we started to sit back and allow the visitors to press forward but it was clear that we knew what we were doing and it really wasn’t a surprise when we doubled our lead when Collar intercepted a loose pass.
He raced forward and crossed for Ryan Rydel to volley into an empty net. Game over, three points and another place higher in the table.