01 Sep 2026
St Albans City 4 Stanway Rovers 1 (Isthmian League Premier Division). From Jess Unwin at Clarence Park, photos by Jim Standen.
A return to winning ways for St Albans City was nowhere near as easy as the final scoreline suggested, and Saints manager Gary McCann admitted his team were “second best” for long periods of this game.
The result might flatter Saints, but after a seesaw start to the season with the optimism bubble generated by two impressive wins quickly burst by two successive defeats, everyone rooting for City will simply be relieved they collected all three points on Saturday.
Premier Division new-boys Stanway Rovers arrived at Clarence Park with only one point from their first four games, yet the team that hails from the outer suburbs of Colchester caught Saints cold and went 1-0 up just five minutes into the game when Stephen Toussaint poked home from a corner.
The recent heavy rain that has helped to restore the sun-baked Clarence Park pitch was lashing down again as Saints got back on level terms after just 12 minutes – Mikey Faulkner setting up Zak Sowden-Fletcher, whose pinpoint cross from the left wing was swept home by Kai Brown for his first league goal of the season.
Brown thought he had a second goal when he pounced to net after the Rovers keeper Dion Henry could only parry a long-range effort from Jack James, but it was ruled out for what seemed a debateable offside decision.
Rovers continued to more than hold their own before the home team did go into a 2-1 lead on 44 minutes after Faulkner cut in from the left wing, switched to his right foot and then drilled a low shot into the bottom corner.
Just moments later, it looked like Saints would go further ahead when Faulkner was brought down for a penalty. The 20-year-old took the spot kick himself but Henry saved and City could not convert as the ball ricocheted around the penalty area.
After the break, Rovers responded well and looked the better team. An equaliser, which nearly arrived from a left-footed Matthias Fanimo drive that flashed past a post, wouldn’t have been undeserved.
Instead, centre back Remi Sutton effectively put Saints out of sight, getting on the end of Alex Dyer’s 79th-minute free kick with a volley from close range.
And after 89 minutes Rovers gifted a fourth goal to Saints when Henry scuffed his pass, giving the ball straight to Inih Effiong just outside the six-yard box. The substitute kept his cool to skip round a couple of desperate tackles to make it 4-1.
As ever, McCann was admirably honest in his post-match appraisal of City’s performance on the club’s YouTube channel: “4-1 was not a true reflection of the game.
He added: “I thought in the second half we were second best a lot of the time – they controlled the game a lot better.”
The men in yellow and blue were certainly guilty of sloppy passing in the second 45 minutes, which handed possession to the visitors and prompted murmurs of frustration from some of the watching crowd of 615.
At times, there was a surprising lack of composure from Saints players, who panicked on the ball, hitting passes that had no real chance of finding a teammate or that simply sailed into touch.
However, McCann was quite right to point out that Rovers weren’t able to use their possession to create goal chances and that his side defended “reasonably well”.
He continued: “We’ve got four goals on the back of a sort of average performance. As a team, we’re not quite there yet. I’d have to say that in all five performances so far, I’ve seen moments I don’t like and I’ve seen moments I do like.
“We need to put together better performances, but that takes time when you’ve got so many new players in the squad. We’re going in the right direction but we’re not the finished article and there’s more work to be done.”
Making his debut for St Albans City in the Stanway game was striker Sam Ayolie, 18, who has signed on loan from Stevenage FC’s academy set-up. Midfielder Haziz Kone has now departed after signing a full transfer deal with Potters Bar.
