Oxhey Jets 1-2 Royston Town

ROYSTON TOWN bounced back from Saturday’s defeat to St Margaretsbury to overcome Oxhey Jets on Tuesday night.

Oxhey hadn’t won in their previous five league outings and Royston can be seen to have done well in these recent potentially tricky mid-week away games and were keen to keep this going.

The mist was moving in but the pitch looked in excellent condition for good football. Manager Paul Attfield handed winger Paul Klein a first team debut following some impressive displays with the reserves as the pressure grew on a first team squad depleted by injuries and suspensions.

The match started with some good passing and movement from Royston but with no real end product and the first chance on goal came after 15 minutes with the impressive Martin Standen winning the ball strongly and threading a great pass through for Ryan Lockett whose shot went just wide.

Royston stepped up the pace with Klein getting into the match and a good move between him and Ricky Young saw a good effort saved. The scoring was opened in the 39th minute following a great move with full back Jack Bradshaw finding Ross Collins with a pin-point pass before he teed up Standen with a deft flick and the midfielder powered home a low shot into the far corner.

The Crows retook to the pitch for the second half with substitute Bobby Dance coming on for Klein.

On 52 minutes Oxhey equalised following a corner where the Royston marking was poor and, despite Jorden Gibson’s best efforts to keep them out, the ball rebounded to Anthony Shepherd who powered the ball into the net.

The next 20 minutes was all Royston as they toiled to create good chances on goal with efforts from Young, Dance and Lockett all being well saved by the Jets ‘keeper Sam Styles.

On 65 minutes Lockett limped off with hamstring problems to add to the injury list and Glen Lamacraft took his place.

This period of sustained pressure led to Royston regaining the lead. On 70 minutes a great effort on goal by Bradshaw was matched with an equally good save by Styles with the fullback’s low accurate drive being deflected round the post. The resulting corner was sent over by skipper Collins to be met by a thumping header from John McGrandles with Styles again making a fine one handed stop, only to see the loose ball followed up by Lamacraft to knock it home.

With Attfield urging his players to move the ball quicker the Crows were eager to add to the score. Gibson kept his team ahead by producing his own impressive one-handed save following a good block tackle by McGrandles that fell to the Jets striker who had hit it first time.

In the second minute of injury time Bradshaw was awarded his second yellow card of the game for an innocuous incident and was sent off to add to Attfield’s future selection dilemmas.

Lewis Endacott was awarded the Man of the Match for his solid performance at centre-back.

Royston Town: Gibson, Bradshaw, Apostolos, McGrandles, Endacott, Martin Standen, Edwards, Collins (Capt), Young, Lockett (Lamacraft), Klein (Dance).

Attendance: 43