Darts v St Albans (Sat 12th Jan 3pm)

[DA Mikey]

http://www.thenationalleague.org.uk/club-info/517590

No adverts! Maybe I just had a bit of luck...

[Llamaman]

An enjoyable game made so much better with the late winner. Messrs. Bradbrook, Hayes & Roberts seemed much sharper, maybe they have caught up on lost playing time caused by various reasons, which can only but help the team. A good debut from Billy Crook was also promising, but made Phil Roberts my MOM, with a special mention to young Dan Darbyshire he was very good talking & interacting with some young children sitting in front of me whilst warming up. He seems a pleasant young man & he had to deal with a tough question from the youngsters, 'Are you Dartford'? Once he got that one right he had won some new fans.

[Lincoln exile]

Like at least one other poster on here I had assumed that Ronnie had been taken off after his head injury was reviewed at half time. According to Jamie Coyle, however, the problem was with his knee, on which the opposition player landed when they collided.

[Park Life]

Played some good stuff first half with two very good goals but unfortunately went asleep for both goals we conceded.
Really couldn't make any sense of the half time substitution especially when we had two full backs on the bench and two full backs on the pitch who can play centre half?? Moving Bradders and Ben was ridiculous and definitely effected our second half performance as we didn't play anywhere near as well and as a result St. Albans had far more possession. However we stuck at it and won with another well taken goal from Phil.

Billy Crook had a good debut and if as reported he needs a bit more game time to get up to is best it looks very encouraging.
Bradders was back to his best and hit a screamer.
Phil Roberts continues to improve and obviously needed game time to get match sharp, he looks a totally different player now. Plenty of pace and stretching their defence with two very well taken goals, easily my MOTM.

We are well placed in the league and things are starting to look more promising.

[Nobby2]

i thought we played well first half when we kept the ball on the ground and also made the wide men stay out wide but second half back to lump it up and hope for the best,once again merson scores for them from a training ground move,when will learn to stay alert for the whole half we keep switching off which then leads to giving away stupid goals.

i liked the look of billy crook but the worry could be we could have the smallest midfield players with billy and lee both playing .
glad phil roberts got a full game at last and took his goals well plus a great strike from bradders.

hope those who left early and missed our late goal dont get to gutted about it.

[Arthur Horsfield]

https://youtu.be/WhSm-ztYXRc
Our own DFCTV highlights.
Shows what a finish from Phil Roberts. But i missed that save from Bailey. As good as a goal

[Arthur Horsfield]

Anyone listening to the highlights can hear Phil higher shouted from I think Flan. He does just that and that's the move that got him in. Result a great finish and 3 points

[tommytollbooth]

Looking at the highlights Phil Roberts winning goal is even better when you consider the big St Albans number 5 had his arm around Phil's neck trying to pull him off the ball.

[spike]

Well it was great to get the win and wow, did Phil Roberts put in a performance or what? Let's be frank, he was barely involved in his first couple of games and fans were far from impressed. However, he started to show a bit of promise at Wealdstone before exploding into what we saw on Saturday. He was absolutely superb and has to be my MOTM with Bradders a way back in second place. I presume Phil was just a bit ring rusty and needed a few games, but if this is what we can expect in the future then that is a really exciting prospect. Although Phil stole the show, Billy Crook also had a decent debut with a very solid performance in midfield. It wasn't spectacular but he very rarely gave the ball away and looks like a very good signing. It does look like we've got a half-decent squad here now and there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic I think.

That all said, my thoughts at 5pm on Saturday were that we got it tactically wrong in the second half and were a bit fortunate that Roberts spectacular wonder goal grabbed the 3 points for us. In the first half we were creating chances and it was all very encouraging and exciting to watch and the only thing that spoiled it was giving away two really sloppy goals, the second of which was a carbon copy of the goal that St Albans scored against us here last season. (It's on youtube). Nevertheless, for my money we were playing with shape and purpose and I felt confident we would go on to win the game. It was unfortunate that Ronnie had to go off injured, but I was completely baffled when this one enforced change somehow led to us being weaker in THREE positions for the second half … Ben is great out wide but far less effective in the middle, Coker hasn't really impressed me yet, he's like an upside down swan (you can see the legs going like the clappers but not much progress is being made) and although Bradders is an all-time great in midfield and does a very good job at centre-back, he's still a little short of Vinty in his specialist position. As a fan standing looking at the bench, I couldn't understand why we didn't just bring on Onyemah or Driver and switch Wynter to centre-back rather than disrupting the whole balance of the side. Instead we made what appeared to be unnecessary changes that in my view, made us far less effective in the second half. Those changes made no sense to me until I heard Coyley's interview on Radio Kent, where he explained that we had two injured players on the bench. Whilst that does explain the substitutions, it does beg the question what point there is in naming subs that can't play. In reality, we had no defensive cover on the bench whatsoever. We had a similar problem at Wealdstone last week and I have to wonder why young Taylor Fisher wasn't recalled for these games. I accept that he hasn't done enough to dislodge the senior players yet, but he impressed in his previous outings and surely this is exactly the sort of situation that we should be using to give our youngsters their chance. Had he been on the bench on Saturday, he could have slotted in at full-back with Wynter moving inside to cover Vinty and we would not have had to disrupt the whole team. I would be interested to know the thought process behind this situation.

Anyway, overall it was a good game to watch and we do now seem to have a crop of players capable of making some sort of impression on the league table. If we can just get a bit of consistency in personnel and performance then we might just hold on to a play-off slot.

[Ozymandias]

Yes Spike, we got it wrong in the 2nd half tactically, but not half as wrong as SAC. Fortunately.