STAND ATHLETIC...4 ELTON VALE ...3: Remember the days before wall-to-wall football on television?

When Match of the Day featured one game and could instinctively select a 1-0 or 0-0 whilst the other 20 teams in the first division were rattling in 30 goals between them?

You could re-invent it today and guarantee goals.

Follow Arsenal or Portsmouth or Newcastle or City.

All contenders for goals'r'us at one end or the other.

Step down to Stand and, currently, you'd get the thick end of six per game.

When the season started, Stand's major concern appeared to be the goals for column rather than goals against.

However, with four games gone, Stand have scored 11 but conceded 12.

The first derby of the season saw Stand bury the Titans 5-1.

The second saw them coast into a comfortable 3-0 half-time lead courtesy of goals from Airey, Walsh and Kluj.

This looked like a great position from which to build providing that they didn't concede early goals in the second half.

Unfortunately, Stand conceded. It was 3-1 within five minutes and 3-2 within ten.

Confidence evaporated and what should've been a cruise turned into a crisis.

Another delicately fashioned goal from Dickinson alleviated some pressure before another moment of indecisive defensive play gifted Elton a lifeline at 4-3.

Again, for Stand, it became all hands on deck.

A first half which had ended too quickly had given way to a second half which seemed interminable.

Fortunately, Elton's hump-it-and chase-it tactic became predictable, and eminently controllable,

even for a struggling defence.

There was still time for Welsh to have a goal disallowed but the pressure evaporated with the final whistle.

Stand's next home fixture, Ashton, is 25th September.

STAND: Hassall, Kluj, Morley, Harrington, Heaney, Martin, Welsh, Pratt, Airey, Walsh, Dickinson. Subs: Howells, Shine, Davenport.