North London Tara's recent renaissance continued apace this morning, with a superb performance from all 13 players involved in this game helping to secure a point against league leaders St Andrews Youth. Though there are understandable feelings of disappointment given we failed to notch the win our performance deserved, today marks a considerable turnaround for a team dismissed on The Hendon League website as playing for pride and making up the numbers.

Having lost both of our league meetings last season and again been blitzed by Adamson's pace in our September friendly, its obvious that St Andrews high intensity, counter attacking style can cause us problems. Now I've got bundles of respect for Eddie and his charges but to be honest I don't think we've ever really done ourselves justice against them. That changed today and I'm chuffed with it, even more so after a slow start in our opening 2 games. From the very first whistle we seized control and took the game to our opponents, driven on by an excellent midfield trio of Larry, Deco and Kieran Kelly. All three had great games today –Dec was immense in the air as always and a great foil for The Beast who is enjoying his best times in a Tara jersey at present, while Larry revealed another side to his game with a committed performance based on hard work rather than deft touches. At the back a solid and intelligent performance from Paul, Gav, Sean, Burkey and Briz underpinned it all with some great headers and canny tackling. Noel was an absolute joy to behold –winning the physical and psychological battle with his man hands down and forcing him to move around in an attempt to get away from him.

Save for ten minutes of madness when St A's took advantage of Seans poor header and Stephens lack of cover to open the scores and see another disallowed, we bossed the first half hands down. Kieran's superb headed equalizer from yet another JP assist was the least we deserved for our efforts, and testament to the character and resilience bristling through the team.

For the first 20 minutes of the second half however St Andrews came flying back into it and put us under some tremendous pressure. AJ got away quickly at a short free-kick to fire narrowly wide and there were corners aplenty for The Yoofs, perhaps reflecting their dominance at this time. The left-winger looked to have great touch and ability but once again Clifford stuck to his guns and did himself proud, while Paul, Gav, Dec and Noel owned the airways and Rizza cleaned up the rest. I've really been impressed with Briz these past 2 weeks and not just because I know first hand how hard it is. Having weathered the storm the pendulum swung back in our favour and the clearer chances came our way. JP, Sean and Stephen always looked menacing going forward and Kieran forced one of many great saves from the Saints former Sudbury keeper when clean through. Pat and Murph could both also have scored and both did well when they came on.

As for Man of the Match I was extremely tempted to give the nod to Keiran Kelly for the 2 nd consecutive week. He really was box to box today and unlucky not to score more than the one he did or notch an assist with one of several excellent passes; his defensive play was, as ever, faultless. In truth though its impossible to look beyond Burkey, who wins his 2 nd accolade in three weeks with another impeccable performance. Though he will hate to hear it Noel is a tremendous defender and an uncompromising and relentless marker. The job he did on Adamson today was straight out of the Top Drawer and reduced The Youths attacking threat to a manageable level. Roll on Rambo.