It was a game of two halves, Barry

Things were looking better for Valley this week. We had shrugged off our usual handicap of playing with less than 11 players, this time we had 13, raring for action. With the return of 3 1st XI regulars this meant we could welcome back Bomber at the back.

Will's strike on goal is saved

The first half was a lesson in effective team play with wonderful movement, inciteful passing, tight marking and good finishing. Needless to say, this wasn't from Valley. The running from deep of Purley was the main problem as there was not enough tracking of runners from Valley defensively. There were a few forays forward, but there was not enough support for Kevin and new strike partner Will. Unfortunately we couldn't make our short corners count.

Kevin maintains his scoring run

And so the first half ended with Valley relieved to have kept the score down to 0-4.

After our half-time team talk, the side was reshaped and appeared to have a better balance. Ross, on his return to the fold, started to be the main attacking outlet for Valley, carrying the ball up the field, working with Will and Kevin.

Ross is too fast to be caught on camera

This allowed the rest of the team to concentrate more on defensive duties and this resulted in a lot less chances for Purley, although we did let in another 2 goals shortly after the restart.

Going forward Ross was ghosting past opponents up the right wing waltzed into the D and squared for Will to bag his first goal for Valley. Shortly afterwards there was a carbon copy run up the wing and the foul on Ross resulted in a short corner. Bomber stopped it and laid it off to Kevin, who made it 2 goals in 2 games

Purley looked shocked at this, only slightly more that our faithful supporters. As Valley pressed on, JC ran down a defender on their goal line, blocked his clearance, squared to Ross who powered into the D, slipped the ball to Will who got enough on it to squeeze it under the keeper.

We couldn't score any more, but there were a lot of positives form this performance although our habit of starting to play after conceding 4 goals is something we need to shake out of. There were good performances from Sumit, Ross, Will, Kevin, Derek and Bomber which hopefully we can build on going into next weeks game.

Man of the Match: Ross for giving us hope of an upset in the second half.

Thanks to Helen for umpiring

[Ed: Thanks to Jane Simms, Hannah and Sumit's daughter for their photographic skills ]