St Albans City manager Ian Allinson was full of praise for Harpenden Town as the National League South side kicked-off their pre-season campaign at Rothamsted Park.

Two late Mitchell Weiss goals gave them a 2-1 win at the SSML:side and the former Arsenal man was impressed by what he saw from the hosts.

He said: "They worked extremely hard and got a lot of bodies behind the ball.

"They were very well organised but their keeper [Alex Desmond] has had a really special game and made five or six really good saves.

"I didn’t want to leave Mitchell and Shaun [Jeffers] on for as long but I don’t want to lose any games.

"We want to try and win everything we do, it’s the way we are.

"There are lots of things to work on. We probably had a dozen corners and never had an end product but we played a lot more football in the second half and passed in well.

"We have just come off two weeks of putting miles into the legs and now we need to get some energy in to them."