The M3s put last week’s defeat behind us with a win against St Neots that managed to be both more comprehensive than the final four-two scoreline suggests and also a match in which we came close to throwing away two points.

A dodgy opening five minutes or so when the visitors looked threatening was followed by a dominant performance for the rest of the first half. Shots rained in on the Saints' goal, most of them on target, apart from JJ’s tomahawks. The visitors’ keeper must have been pushing twenty saves from the match, though we did make life somewhat easy for him by trying to cream straight shots through him rather than aiming across the goal where supporting players were often to be found.

We finally broke through when we used the space and time we had in the visitors’ circle to show a little more finesse. The opener came when Nev picked out Joe from a short corner, Joe finishing with a flick that he lifted neatly over the stopper’s pads on his near post. Simon added a second soon after as he was on hand to deflect in at the far post after Ed’s cross-shot following a barnstorming run down the left wing.

The Saints came close to pulling one back with a short corner awarded as time in the half expired, only to be denied by keeper George as he got his right kicker across to the shot and added enough of a deflection to send the ball wide by a clear inch. That would have been very much against the run of play, which wasn’t the case with our third or fourth strikes. Number three stemmed from Will’s quickly taken sideline back to Jan, who then picked out JJ at the top of the circle. JJ proved that practice makes perfect as this time his reverse stick strike banged sweetly into the bottom corner. The fourth came from an unlikely source – sweeper JT. Up to inject a short corner, JT was sauntering back towards his position as the Saints countered, meaning he was still nicely upfield for the counter-counter-attack. A neat dribble took him into the top right of the circle and a fizzing, rising strike flashed past the keeper on his near post.

Fifteen minutes left and four-nil up. Game won, right? It appeared that we thought as much and then tried our best to demonstate the folly of such assumptions. The Saints’ first, an accurate strike from a short corner, didn’t really cause a ripple; it was mostly a case of frustration that the clean sheet had gone. However when they were gifted a second by a defender deflecting a shot home a few minutes later, our team began unaccountably to panic. The visitors sensed this and piled forward, and this pressure produced a penalty flick as another short corner strike hit a defender’s body on the line. We were staring at being pulled back to four-three with five minutes to play but fortunately the flick was a tame effort. However, even flubbed shots need saving and that is exactly what George did, first blocking the ball and then sitting on it for good measure. Textbook.

George’s save gave enough breathing space to see us through the little time remaining. And the good news continued after the final whistle as other results meant our lead in the table is back out to five points. Next we have a derby against one of the sides in the (pretty bunched) chasing pack, Cambridge City 6. The lesson from this week was that we need to concentrate from the first whistle to the last if we want to avoid our promotion push becoming derailed.