First-half performance destroys Rovers' hopes

St Martin's 4, Rovers 1

REIGNING champions St Martin's have issued an early warning in the Cable & Wireless Priaulx League. It will take a monumental effort to wrestle local football's biggest club prize away from them.

They maintained their 100% start to the season with a 4-1 demolition of the previously unbeaten Rovers at Blanche Pierre Lane on Saturday.

After 45 minutes, it was game over.

Although Rovers improved in the second half and created half-a-dozen chances, Rovers coach Graham Hockey had no complaints about the result and the ending of his side's promising start to this campaign in this top-of-the-table clash.

Prior to kick-off he had been confident of getting something out of the game.

'I'm expecting a positive result today and I'm being very positive about it. The squad we have got now is capable of beating anyone and it's going to be quite interesting,' he said.

But his hopes of building on the opening-day victory over Bels and a commendable midweek draw with Vale Rec were dashed inside the first five minutes.

Robert Pickford left centre back Tom Rihoy for dead before calmly slotting home past keeper Jason Olivera to give the champions a dream start.

Before the 20-minute mark, the lively Adam Heaume was hacked down in the box by Rihoy for one of the clearest penalties likely to be seen this season. Alex Hunter made no mistake from the spot and it was 2-0.

Twenty minutes later Hunter was brought down just outside the area by Rovers' skipper Keith Quertier. In a flash the ball was in the net again as the quick-thinking Hunter curled it low past Olivera from the resultant free kick for a 3-0 interval lead.

Just before the break, the only applause the Rovers' contingent could raise was to referee Ted Teed for awarding them a free kick.

It went from bad to worse after the change of ends and just two minutes were on the clock when Etienne Ogier's delightful through ball released Pickford down the middle and he finished clinically to make it 4-0.

A Simon Tostevin shot was tipped on to the bar and to safety by Saints keeper Nathan Pattimore before Rovers grabbed a consolation as Jamie Ferbrache capitalised on a defensive mix-up to reduce the arrears.

They almost punished Saints again as the home side appeared to relax and stopped doing their individual jobs properly, but Barry Rowson's goalbound shot was superbly cleared to safety by Ogier.

Pattimore redeemed himself for some earlier uncharacteristic handling by saving brilliantly low to his right to keep out a Chris Le Noury shot that looked destined for the bottom corner.

Rovers have had a punishing early-season schedule with four games in 10 days and five of Saturday's starting line-up will be heading off to university shortly which will stretch the squad's resources to the limit.

They badly missed the influential George Prow on Saturday.

'We will pick ourselves up for the game against North on Wednesday and take the positive points forward from the second half,' said Hockey.

Colin Renouf, one half of Saints' coaching dream team, was delighted that the loss of several players, including inspirational goalscorer Dominic Heaume with a broken hand sustained against Sylvans last week, had not hampered their winning start to the defence of their title.

'We started off lively with a few players out which gave others an opportunity to come in,' he said.

He was pleased with Pickford's performance on his first Priaulx start but was keen not to single out individuals.

'It was a good overall team performance. We can't do better points-wise and although a couple of our performances have not been as good as I would like, we have the points in the bag,' he said.

'We will always miss Dom because he is a class player but we are certainly on track and hopefully we will improve. There is a really good spirit in the squad.'