On a difficult surface we actually started brightly with some nice football being played particularly down our left. Daniel Gurney playing his second game for us along with new signing Nicky White, Reece Jackson, Zak Graham and Craig Prendergarst all prominent in the opening stages.

With us certainly the better side we then succumbed to a sucker punch on the quarter hour, when a long clearance from the home goalkeeper caused sufficient confusion for our back line, who on allowing the ball to bounce gifted a simple tap in to the Colliers Wood forward with Mark Daniels back in goal stranded in no mans land.

We continued to have the better of things and our pressure gave us a number of dead ball opportunities which we certainly didn’t make the best of.

Far too often from these we strayed offside or fouled needlessly when the home defence was under pressure. Our best chance came after a fine cross from Jimmy Brazil from the right, but with no front player gambling it was knocked behind for a corner.

At the other end the lively front man for Colliers Wood ensured our defenders were kept busy, and with the hosts using the pace of their wide right-sided midfielder and their long throw specialist on the same side, we had to guard against complacency.

At half time and still trailing there was no need for concern as performance wise we weren’t far away.

Although clear cut chances were at a premium again in the second half, we did open up the hosts defence on the hour mark when Matt Holley’s through ball found Reece Jackson, whose left foot shot somehow evaded both the far post and the on rushing Craig Prendergarst.

That miss proved costly, as just moments later with us still enjoying the greater territorial advantage a long clearance that we didn’t deal with, saw a three way foot race won by the Colliers Wood striker who duly slotted home.

With just twenty minutes or so to go we needed an early response, but didn’t get one, and the game began to drift towards its end without us looking likely to reduce the arrears.

However with eight minutes remaining we scored. Zak Graham hitting home a fine volley following good work by Reece Jackson to give us just a glimmer of hope. Unfortunately despite putting the home defence under considerable pressure in the final few minutes we could not force an equalise,r and were left rueing our two defensive errors that gifted our opponents their two goals.