Following the u18's midweek cup victory over Newport County, they traveled to face an unbeaten Portsmouth side who had made a good start to the season.
The players went into the game full of confidence and belief after showing excellent resilience in the previous games to turn deficits into victories.
Pompey, the home side, possessed some good technical players and always had threats in forward areas of the pitch. To counteract this, the Gas changed shape slightly to suit their available personnel and set up slightly deeper to kill the space in behind and hit Portsmouth quickly on the counter-attack.
The squad was given lots of information beforehand and produced an outstanding defensive performance to nullify the hosts main threats. Defensively it was probably one of the best performances an U18's group has produced for a number of years as the youngsters managed to restrict the hosts to mostly long-range strikes from distance.
The desire and determination shown in order to maintain the clean sheet, block shots, and defend crosses was fantastic. Aside from a frantic final 10 minutes the Gas really controlled the game despite not having lots of possession.
The most pleasing aspect of the performance was the players ability to retain all the information given to them in the build-up and implement it into the game plan to perfection, a display worthy of real credit.
The deciding goal of the game came when the Gas won possession in the middle third, Matt Reed drove with the ball before tricking his way past a defender to win a penalty, which he cooly dispatched for his third goal of the season on the 21st minute.
There was a scare in the 86th minute as Jed Ward produced another penalty save, his fourth of the week to keep our one-goal lead intact.
Overall a fantastic performance which again highlighted the spirit and togetherness the group is showing consistently, with real grit and determination to win the game and display a winning mentality.
Most definitely the group's best performance to date and a display the players should be extremely pleased with.
Bristol Rovers: Jed Ward (GK), Tyron Thompson, James Gorman (c), Adam Biss, Zak Ford, Henry Njonjo, Niall Lovelock, Andreas Smola, Harvey Greenslade, Josh Jenkins, Matt Reed.
Subs: Airidas Vilinauskas, Alfie Cummings, Jerry Lawrence, Kyrie Pierre