A 17 man squad were on hand to face Postal ALC at Persley in our second pre – season match. We had 5 trialists in the squad and 4 of them were handed a starting role in the side that was set up as follows. Sct Marlow in goal, Ellis, Bews, G.Fulton and Trialist Jaffery in defence. Mutch, Trialist Alexander, Morgan & Trialist Gebbie formed the midfield, behind 4th Trialist Simpson and R.Fulton. An extremely strong bench of Wood, Duncan, Webster, Marlow , Trialist Dougall & Fisken all ready for action throughout the match. Understandably with the bad combination of lack of match practise, no training and 4 newcomers, Halli struggled to get into the match in the early stages. Postal who have been training for the past 3 weeks looked by far the sharper of the sides and their running off the ball was excellent. Our midfield, which resembled the casting room for a Pantomime, struggled to make any in roads in the air. Bruce Mutch our tallest midfielder at a whopping 5 foot 9 inches! The Postal midfield were winning balls sent out by both keepers and this meant that there was little respite for our beleaguered defence. We fell behind in 20 when a slick move down the right was met with little resistance and a low ball across goal was driven beyond Sct Marlow. This did wake us up a little and a good free kick from Alexander picked out an excellent cross field run from Gebbie. He laid it off to Mutch however his cross was cleared. Postal grabbed a second in 35 as they continued to dominate. Webster, Wood, Fisken, Duncan and Dougall were all introduced prior to the break and slowly we came a little more into things in an attacking sense. Morgan did well to find Wood who bust a gut getting himself forward. He controlled but didn’t get a full load on his shot which went beyond the far post. (H.T.2-0). Positional changes were made at the break with G.Fulton moved forward in an effort to add some height to the midfield. We kicked off and the new midfielder latched onto the ball took it forward, lost it and Halli were lucky to escape when the ball was fired past. With the full squad being utilised it was obvious that we were never going to get any flow to our game and unfortunately the wheels came off our pram big time. A total collapse took place throughout the second period with school boy defending contributing to a near cricket score line. The Posties delivered time and again and pretty soon we found ourselves 6-0 down! The only goal of any real quality was indeed number 6 which was bulleted into the top corner from long range. We did in fact carve out a few chances ourselves with Mutch through a couple of times, Fisken trying from range, G.Fulton leaning back to fire over, Simpson through one on one and Jaffery beaten just as he prepared to pull the trigger. The home side rubbed our noses in it when a 7th was knocked in to complete the scoring (F.T.7-0). Not a great deal we can take from this one apart from the fact it stretched the legs. No Halli player reached anything like their best form with Nick Duncan the only guy to show when he made a number of crucial tackles and won his fair share of headers in the second period. As is always the case in these games the constant tinkering and changes does not help anything but the manner in which we lost most of the goals was poor. We now only have a couple of training sessions and one game before the season gets underway for real and given that the bulk of the squad will be at a Mini 21st birthday party on Friday evening, prior to facing Premier League side Westdyke the following day, it may well be damage limitation on Saturday afternoon !! Tonights Hallitopman goes to Nick Duncan.