A real baptism of fire for Alton's youngsters in the opening league game in Portsmouth on Saturday. Two goals down after 10 minutes they showed real character to recover their composure and make a real game of it.

Moneyfields dominated early on and some naive defending left the away side a mountain to climb against one of the strongest sides in the competition, that the keeper only had one other decent save to make during the rest of the half was testament as to how the group dug in to stay in the game until half time.

The second half was much better as Alton proved to be the better side playing football with confidence and creating good chances to get back in the game, then the sucker punch as a speculative scissor kick from the edge of the box flew into the top corner 3-0.

Alton immediatly pulled a goal back as John Lancashire was fouled in the area and picked himself up to score from the spot, they then created 3 one on one chances, two fell to young Lewis Osborne and the other to Lancashire but unfortunately none were taken. Moneyfields were now breaking the game up with numerous fouls as Alton grew in confidence, in fact in one spell late in the first half Alton were awarded 4 fouls within 25 yards of goal when goal scoring opportunities looked likely.

As they bossed the game a decent bounce in their favour would have presented goal scoring chances to Nick Sharp and Jack Jones, but alas to sum up thier day Moneyfields broke away in the last minute to score a forth to rub salt into the wounds.