St Albans City joint manager James Gray had nothing but praise for his side following their dramatic win at Staines Town.

The Saints had an excellent first half and were a constant threat to Jack Turner’s goal, albeit without actually testing the shot-stopper.

In the second half that all changed. After falling two goals behind, Steve Wales netted St Albans’ first goal of the season. John Frendo in his first appearance scored the equaliser before Wales scored a potential goal of the season candidate to win the game.

Gray said: “The boys put in a proper shift. I told the lads that ‘you can see what can be achieved when you work as hard as the team you’re playing against’.

“We have quality in the team and some of the goals we scored tonight showed that. Each to a man we were alert, sharp and tried to force the issue.”

He added: “I felt we were always in the game. In the first half we played some really good stuff and it was a sucker punch to go in 1-0 down.

“We tried to keep the lads’ heads up and keep doing what we were doing. We knew we would create chances – we had in the first half – but to do 2-0 down you starting think ‘is this league doing to be like this?’

St Albans three goals came in a 12-minute spell of fast, furious football, which was too much for Staines to handle.

Gray admitted that after Wales’ first goal, he had considered telling his players to relax. Luckily he didn’t and two more goals followed.

He said: “For 10 minutes we were like animals; we went ballistic and I was thinking ‘are we going to get sucker punched?’ Do I calm them down or go for it because I felt that were down?”

“That 10 minutes took it away from them. We need to try to do that for 20, 30, 40 minutes. If we can we’ll be a real handful because we play with good tempo and we can move the ball well.”

Still, Gray is not getting too carried away after the win.

“We know what we’re up against [in this league] so we’re not going to get carried away. Tonight was good, we started sharp and got amongst them. We’ve had two games and got three points and go into Farnborough with plenty of confidence.”

St Albans travel to Farnborough on Saturday, 3pm kick-off.