Leighton Buzzard Mens 1st v Luton Mens 1st

Leighton Buzzard travelled away to Luton for a tough first pre-season friendly leading to their league start in October.

From the whistle Luton were the brighter side attacking the Leighton D and winning short corners early on. These were kept out through some brave defending and excellent goal keeping by Leighton’s ‘Player of the Match’ Connor Rowson. A quick turn over led to Dan Lambert driving the ball up the left side of the pitch and finding Dave Jackson at the top of the Luton D, who was able to take a touch round the defender and smash the ball past the Luton keeper to give Leighton the lead.

Luton continued to apply pressure to Leighton for the rest of the half but were kept out by some strong tackling from Will Giltrow and the Buzzard’s defence, which were able to keep the home team at bay.

The start of the second half saw Leighton take the game by the scruff of the neck and start to put pressure on a shaky Luton defence. This pressure paid off for Leighton with David Fry scoring a trademark reverse hit which looped over the helpless Luton Keeper. Some great possession play from Leighton showed the class that they will hope to take into the season. Unfortunately tired heads and legs resulted in Luton scoring a breakaway goal. This gave Luton their second wind and a number of short corners eventually saw Luton score their equaliser. Another Luton attack forced Rowson to make an impressive save but he was unable to keep the ball out of the goal in the resulting goal mouth scramble that put Luton in the lead. Some quick passing from Luton down the right side of the pitch enabled them to find a free man in Leighton’s D and place the ball past Leighton’s out stretched keeper. In the dying minutes of the game Leighton pressed the Luton D but were unable to make a real goal scoring chance.

This was a good performance against a well drilled Luton team which Leighton can build on the coming weeks heading into the new season.

Final result LBHC 1st 2 - Luton 1st 4