Cambridge South 2nds narrowly avoided a potential banana skin against intra-club rivals South 3rds, scraping through with a 2-1 home win.

After last week's magnificent performance against Wisbech, the 2nds went into this game in good spirit. However, with several people playing out of position (especially in defence where half of the normal back four were unavailable) the team struggled to find their shape and the fluency in midfield was missing.

The match started badly when captain Kev Rowland lost the toss which meant playing directly into the setting sun. The opposition pressed forward strongly in the opening phases, obliging keeper Lino Di Lorenzo to make several excellent saves and interceptions. However, as the half progressed the balance of the game became more even and then the 2nds took the lead when a direct move up the right hand side of the pitch was crossed into the D and Rob Barton was given enough space to turn and shoot into the corner of the goal.

One-nil, and now would have been the time for the 2nds to move up a gear and put the game out of reach but the 3rds responded superbly with their midfield and defence combining well to keep the 2nds' attack at bay and create several opportunities themselves.

In the second half there were brief periods where South 2nds displayed some of their pass and move game and one such passage led to a second goal. A quick ball out from defence to Kev Rowland and some good interplay between the midfield released Dave Aston up the left flank for him to look up and gave the ball to Mark Pears who, doing what he does best, had pulled away from his marker in the D to gain half a yard of space and with a crisp shot put the ball in the bottom left corner.

By this time, the 3rds had suffered a setback with an injury to Paul South who had been looking very sharp. Despite this, their midfield (in particular Stu Creed and Patrick Farmbrough) were still battling hard and for much of the game were in control of the middle of the pitch, so even at 2-0 the game was not safe. This was proved when the 3rds pulled one back in the last quarter of the game, Patrick being the first to react at a short corner when the ball rebounded off Lino's pads.

However, despite their best efforts, the 3rds couldn't quite force an equaliser and at the final whistle a relieved 2nd XI were happy to walk away with three points from a game which could quite easily have gone either way but where a draw would probably have been a fair result .

After the game captain Kev Rowland said: "We battled hard but need to work much more on our shape and movement, letting the ball do the work to create opportunities. All credit to the 3rd XI who pushed us hard and belied their position near the bottom of the table."