20:53
Wednesday | August 13
u21_preseason_leytonorient_jadenwilliams

Orient started stronger, Kelman routinely firing home from the centre of the box on five minutes following a cross from the right by Jordan Brown, before clinically despatching a second across goal and into the bottom corner from the left angle 14 minutes later.

We refused to allow the game to get away from us and produced some nice passages of play at times with Williams twice going close, first breaking into the box and hitting the far post with a crisply-struck effort on 20 minutes before being denied by a good block from Orient keeper Zach Hemming a quarter-of-an-hour later.

A loose pass at the back almost gifted Kelman his hat-trick but Josh Keeley was equal to his rising shot, before Williams pulled a goal back on the stroke of half-time, latching onto Damola Ajayi's through ball to charge between the centre-halves, carry it around Hemming and finish from a tight angle on the right.

The second half didn't yield too much in the way of clear chances until the latter stages, where Ajayi's quick thinking on a free-kick saw him play substitute Irow through on goal on his second appearance following his return from injury but after a great first touch to take himself into the box, the forward dragged his effort fractionally wide of the far post. Darren Pratley was off-target from distance after a scuffed clearance by Keeley, who then denied Ollie O'Neill with a sharp low save at his near post as we avoided conceding again in the last couple of minutes, but it wasn't to be in the end in terms of the result as we slipped to our first defeat of pre-season at this level.