This weekend saw us take on Crowland Juniors for our second league fixture. We’d only come across them once in our travels, this was at the Deeping tournament last summer which we lost one- nil. To be fair we weren't at our best in that game and their positional play was very good, so we spend the whole game in our own half.

So to this weeks game and with the guys flying on a high from last week it would be so easy for them to let their guards down, as through the week at training there was a belief they were going to win quite comfortably. As coaches its important for us to help the players find a good balance in terms of their mental approach to the games. Belief in yourself and your team is great, it’s a must, it needs to be part of all of you, but over confidence can potentially have negative affect on performance. After the challenging season last year and then the great start this season it's important to keep the guys feet back on the ground so we could focus on this match, while at the same time letting them know how well they have done, it's a delicate balance but we will get there.

With the team talk completed, we set up for our positions, Jack Roberts was our No1, Ellis Horn was our man at the back, he was supported by Conor Davernport-Gidney in the left wing back role and Ethan Hughes in the right wing back position. Centre Mid-field was Callum McAuley, who was partnered by Brandon Westgarth with Omar Ellis holding the front-line. Starting on the bench Alfie Rogers and Riley Deadman.

Straight in from the whistle we were soon on the attack, it’s so pleasing to see the lads start a match off hungry. We looked very organised, had great shape and showed good support to each other. We finally took the lead through Omar Ellis after a well worked attack. Then once again we switched off, just for a moment leaving Ellis to defend against a wave of yellow shirts, beaten this time our goal was exposed. Jack did he’s best and got very close to the strike, that’s us pegged back to all square.

How would we respond? We didn’t panic, kept to our game plan and was shortly back in the lead with another from our striker Omar. We continue to push forward and piled on the pressure, Crowland did break forward a few times, but our mid-fielders tracked back well and Ellis in defence and Jack in goal coped comfortably. Corners were cleared by the head of Callum on the near post, short corners were closed down quickly by Conor and Ethan, this lead us to being able to breakaway and counter attack with speed. At this point the score didn’t reflect the performance as many attacks were denied by Crowland and missed by us trying to set our shots up perfectly or walk the ball in the back off the net, instead of cracking it goal ward first time. Pressure, apply enough, eventually something will break or give way and this happened to our opponents. Conor was the man to claim the strike, which rounded of a great first half. In my opinion Crowland were fortunate to only trail by two.

Unfortunately Half time saw our concentration levels decrease and our confidence level increase, a problematic combination. The game was not done and dusted by any means as we knew Crowland had some good players and could come back into this in the second half so we did our best to bring these lads back down to earth, but again it was a challenge.

Unfortunately we did lose some concentration, straight away we gave the ball away for a corner on the far side of the pitch, which ordinarily I’m not overly concern about as we have great strength in the air, which was confirmed in the first half and our past matches. All game saw us set up well for set pieces but this time we were a bit slack and Crowland were very quickly back in the game.

This left the whole team a little rattled and deflated, we saw a huge drop in confidence which was now impacting on our play, we still edged the play but we looked shaky, with our mid-field arguing with each other we lost all shape, we kept leaving a massive hole between our mid-field and defence and were lucky not to have been punished for it.

The great teamwork shown in the first half had disappear from the middle of the pitch, we lost Conor through injury and although he looked tired at times he played excellently throughout the whole match.

We did continue to create chances, which lead to a well earned hat-trick for Omar, another great performance and it took a bit of pressure off us as the clock ticked down.

The goals certainly helped calm the team and did improve slightly towards the end of the match, after a few firm words from the side lines. Overall we very much deserved the win, but with things we can coach and work on in training.

With the second half of this game lets try and learn from our mistakes and remember how well we did in the first. Our great movement, the urgency we applied to our play, all the passes we put together, the space we created and how well we tracked back to defend. It was a truly awesome half which proves just how good you guys are!

Some testing games are coming over the next few weeks, more effort and hard work awaits for us all. With so much more for you to gain in knowledge of the game, I truly believe we are on the right path.

These are exciting times!

Keep it up guys, really proud of you all!

Go Go Pumas!