Hertford1 St Albans City 6

HAVING found goals hard to come by so far this summer, St Albans City used the rustic setting of Hertford Town's Hertingfordbury Park home on Tuesday evening to sharpen up their goalscoring capabilities.

City scored six times in the space of 38 minutes against the Ryman League Division Three side but most pleasing for City was the sight of the duo expected to spearhead their attack this season, Gary Ansell and Martin Randall, scoring a brace each.

On a warm evening, City took just 17 minutes to forge ahead with Ansell sweeping the ball home following a low cross from Randall. Three minutes later, the impressive Spencer Knight notched a glorious goal with a majestic 25 yard drive with the outside of his boot which sailed away from keeper Graham Wraight's dive and into the back of the net.

On 27 minutes a spell of pressure ended with the ball going wide to Knight after Chris Piper had been blocked and from Knight's cross Randall hammered a deflected shot into the goal.

Hertford almost reduced the arrears on 32 minutes when Tony Caines, who played for the City Reserves 13 years ago, had a fine drive tipped on to the bar by Lawrence Batty but another deflected goal on 37 minutes from Ansell following superb approach work by Knight and Joe Lyons dashed the county sides hopes of getting back into contention.

Hertford though, did pull one back right on half time when Rudi Hall sent an excellent 22-yard free-kick around the City wall and beyond Batty's dive. That little setback was overcome within two minutes of the restart when Knight showed good composure and technique as he side-stepped Wraight to plant home his second goal of the match after the keeper had flapped at a Lyons cross. But if Knight's two goals were high class efforts, they still had to take second billing to Randall's second goal of the night, on 55 minutes, as he cracked a wonderful 30-yard first time right-footed effort into the back of the net.