It was a long trip for the lads on Tuesday night to Harlow Town for our Premier Division Cup clash, but ultimately a very fruitful one.
Harlow have an excellent stadium with great facilities and, with a town the size of Harlow, have all the ingredients to support a big team in a higher division. Their recent form has picked up and they presented a significant challenge to our ability to progress in this important cup.
Both sides made some changes to manage injury issues and rotate players given current fixture scheduling. Whilst Ryan did make some changes to the starting line-up, it’s a credit to the strength and quality of the squad that we were able to field a highly competitive side at kick off.

This was evidenced as the first half progressed, whereby Tring started to dominate possession and put Harlow under pressure in their own half. However, despite dominating, chances were at a premium and we were restricted to only a couple of reasonable chances. Blake had a good shot well saved on 25min, and this was followed by a series of three corners but we were unable to capitalise. Harry Jones had probably the best chance on 35mins as a clever through ball put him in on goal, albeit from a challenging angle. His efforts was saved unfortunately.
Defensively we looked solid and Harlow were unable to craft any chances of any real significance through out the half. The half time whistle blew with the teams locked at 0 – 0, but there was a general view that we should really have gone into the break ahead.

The second half kicked off and the game had pretty much the same shape as in the first, with the lads playing some nice football and having the better of it in terms of possession, but chances remained limited. Things changed somewhat when Harlow made a double substitution on 60mins, and the complexion of the game changed. Harlow started to push us back and looked much more dangerous going forward. They continued to press and created a numbers of chances that called for some very smart goalkeeping from Jake. Ryan responded with changes of his own, bringing Liam and Max on as a double substitution for Harry and Jimmy on 72mins – this was followed by Dylan and Frankie coming on.

As the game entered its final stage, both teams were searching for a winner, and it was difficult to predict where a goal was going to come from with both teams going close. Just as we were contemplating the prospect of a penalty shootout, the ball fell to Jack in the penalty area and his shot on 90+2 mins from 12 yards hit the defender on the shoulder and looped nicely over the keeper. So 0 - 1 to Tring and much celebration over by the corner flag.

Things weren’t finished yet with Harlow urgently trying to craft an equalizer. However, Max had other things on his mind as he cut in from the left and hit a beautiful shot that found the top corner on 90+6mins - game over at 0 – 2 to Tring.

This was a good result which on balance we deserved, but credit to Harlow as they pushed us all the way. It was a good performance that made the long trip really worth it. The lads put a tremendous effort in and showed real resilience, quality and character to secure the result. Onwards.