First team go down 4-2 at Radnor Valley

Presteigne St Andrews FC
There are worse backdrops to a football match than this one at Radnor Valley
Presteigne St Andrews FC
There are worse backdrops to a football match…

Presteigne St Andrews were beaten 4-2 at old rivals Radnor Valley in their latest pre-season game on Saturday, 22 July.

Radnor started the game very strongly and could easily have been ahead inside 60 seconds but for some last-ditch defending by Presteigne’s stretched back division.

But the relief proved only temporary as Radnor took the lead on five minutes with a shot past an unsighted Simon Hamer, while they then doubled that advantage four minutes later.

It looked at this point as though we were going to be in for a long afternoon but credit to manager Shaun Harris who changed the formation and to the players who dug in which meant there was no further addition to the scoreline before the break.

The half-time team talk was very calm and measured – the good thing at Radnor is these take place on the pitch so you can hear what is being said – and it certainly had the desired effect.

Presteigne had what was probably their best spell of the game in the opening 10 minutes of the second half in which they scored one and then could easily have levelled the game.

First, Kai Dayas (I think) hit a good ball down the left-hand side that Matt Strangwood ran on to and his perfect cross was met by Josh Gardiner to reduce arrears to 2-1.

Minutes later it could have been 2-2 when Strangwood did well to engineer some space inside the area, but rifled his effort just over the bar.

This served to wake up Radnor Valley and a long-range effort brought a good save from Simon Hamer in the Presteigne goal as he flung himself low to his left.

But there was nothing Simon could do to stop Radnor’s third goal – a home-team player cut in from the right and unleashed a fierce left-foot drive that almost stuck in the stanchion inside the Presteigne net.

If he scores a better one this season then it would be certainly worth seeing and Simon Hamer’s call of ‘wide’ was more in hope than expectation.

Presteigne began to tire and Radnor duly added a fourth goal when two of the home-team players combined well to drive a chasm through the hard of the Presteigne defence before a neat finish past Simon Hamer.

It would have been easy for Presteigne to fold but, to their credit, they didn’t and a judicious use of the rolling substitutes employed for this game enabled Shaun to freshen things up a bit late on.

His side responded by upping their game and they were awarded a very generous penalty from which Jack Brazier scored to make the final score 4-2.

The positives for me was that we had a couple of young 16-year-olds in the side who looked very much at home in that company while, in the second half, Presteigne did improve markedly.

But there is clearly work to be done on the fitness side of things as Radnor Valley looked half-a-yard faster for much of the game and they were certainly quicker to the majority of second balls.

When Presteigne passed the ball, they looked every bit as good as the home team but too often there would be two or three passes and then a hopeful long ball knocked forward for the Radnor defenders to deal with comfortably – but this was often due to a lack of options for the man in possession.

There will be a video interview posted with Shaun’s thoughts on the performance but, while Presteigne are clearly a work in progress, there were plenty of plus points to take from this one.

Well done to Radnor Valley who looked a good side on this evidence while they apparently have a host of players still to come back into their squad.