Pre-Season Friendly

St Neots Town               1      Royston Town                  3

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Against higher graded Royston Town, St Neots produced another encouraging performance as it’s newly assembled squad began to function as a unit. After the hottest day on record, the sides produced a surprisingly high tempo performance, cancelling each other out in the early stages of the game. Each side gave a run out for the majority of its playing squad and both Managers must have been pleased with their respective sides’ performance.

The visitors created the first real opening after ten minutes when a shot from Jared Robson was blocked on the St Neots goal line, but the home side responded as the lively Dan Barton brought a useful save from visiting keeper Dimi Kyriatzis. However, the home defence was breached after 24 minutes when the ball was headed across the penalty area to the unmarked Jared Robson who made no mistake from closed range. St Neots former youth keeper, George Anthony, on his senior debut made several good stops as the visitors upped their attacking including a brave save at the feet of Matt Bateman as he bore down on goal. The first half ended with the save of the match by the visiting keeper to deny St Neots’ trialist striker.

St Neots began positively after the break and Declan Nche again tested the visiting keeper with the first effort of the second half.   Then an error by the young St Neots’ keeper gifted Kian Harness a second goal for the visitors just eight minutes after the restart.   This seemed to inspire the home side to greater efforts, and they almost pulled back a goal with a free kick well gathered by the visiting goalkeeper.   Royston them stamped their authority on the game just past the hour when they were gifted an unexpected goal when a shot from outside the area deflected off Mike Baulk past the stranded home keeper with the scorer having little knowledge.   Again, St Neots rallied and after 71 minutes they were deservedly rewarded when Brandon Njoku took on the visiting defence to notch a deserved consolation goal.

Att. 158

(John Walker)