FEATURED BLOGGER: The Hype Train Has Left The Building!

Kirsty Swann writes…

Finally the time for my first game of my season had  arrived, I haven’t been able to make the pre season games ,so I was looking forward to seeing the new squad in action.
 
My first impression when arriving at the ground albeit abit late due to work, and in that five minute spell almost missing a goal! , was that the ground has had a massive upgrade with the new dugouts, as with all the AstroTurf down the side of the pitch for the player to warm up one and proper size technical boxes makes it all seem more professional, also hats off to Mez the groundsman as the pitch looked amazing.

​The Radford’s are going to make a proper go of it this season you can tell they want this as much as the fans, the only downside was the that the scoreboard wasn’t working. A comment from the stands was that we must be the only ground to have two scoreboards on the same side and not one of them is working!
 
The first half performance didn’t fill me with confidence especially when we are one the favourites to walk the league which still makes me nervous, it was abit of the same old same old like last season where the players didn’t quite know what to do when it came to final third, and for some reason Mal Benning still doesn’t seem to want to take on the defenders ,which around where I was sat is what they wanted and thought he could do easily, but it is abit unfair to single handly point him out for this one issue as he is a solid defender for us, The other issue which was quite vocal among the supporters was the performance of new striker Lee Angol who they don’t seem to impressed with regarding his workrate or shooting skills but its only two games into the new season with a team that are still fairly young and jelling together.

In the second half even though Steve Evans said they didn’t get a rocket at half time, it must have been some speech as they were like a whole different team, fast attacking football and more like what I thought I would have been greeted with in the first half, the stand out players for me in that second half were Haydn White who had a blinder of a game and I’m glad they we have managed to get him on a permanent basis, also Paul Anderson shone in the game especially the second half his workrate and determination is all I and fellow stags ask of from a stags player ,give everything you’ve got and leave it on the pitch with which he was rewarded with a goal, maybe its just the beard but in this one game he has quickly landed himself as my new favourite player,I was also glad to see young Danny Rose get on the scoresheet again as I want him to do well ,as the effort he puts in deserves nothing else than being our top striker.

On a side note  am I thinking that Lee Collins is the only player who has played against us and not got booed in recent history? If you can think of anyone else leave a comment or get in touch through twitter.
I think it’s too early to tell where we will end up at the end of the season but if we put in more performances like we did in the second half ,then that will give us the best chance of being up there with the rest of them.