IT took me until midday on Sunday to work out what happened in the second half of Saturday’s game against Luton Town.

Writing this on Thursday, I still don’t know if I’ve got it right!

We outplayed and out-thought Luton for the first 45 minutes, establishing a 2-0 lead.

It was as enjoyable a half as we have seen since we moved to the WHCS in 2008.

Some of our play was slick and incisive - an absolute joy to watch, with Luton chasing shadows.

The two goals came from excellent crosses from Brennan Dickenson and Richard Brindley.

The first was particularly impressive as Chris Porter saw the ball late and only had time for an instinctive flicked header which found the top corner.

Make no mistake, our first-half performance really was outstanding.

Before half-time Luton manager Nathan Jones had changed his formation, putting an extra player in central midfield in an attempt to stop our domination.

Luton could have been four goals down by then.

We went on the back foot for the second half - real backs-to-the-wall stuff in a standard ‘away' formation, hanging on to our three points after a few scares.

We should have been over the hill and far away at 3-0 up against ten men when the officials missed a very clear foul on Chris.

He was grappled around the waist as he was in the clear and about to shoot.

I felt a pang of disappointment at the end, even with a 2-1 win in the bag, as I felt we had missed an opportunity to rub Luton’s nose in it while boosting our own confidence and goal difference.

We have nothing to fear in League Two, particularly at home.

Two-nil is, psychologically, an iffy lead, but nothing like as troubling as being 2-0 down!

The win should have been enough to satisfy every fan, but it wasn’t quite, at least not this fan on Saturday night.

So I was initially beating myself up about why George Elokobi led his back division by straddling the 18-yard penalty box line as it was this that stretched midfield and meant Luton’s numerical advantage in there enabled them to break forward dangerously. By Sunday morning, good sense had got the better of emotion and it began to feel that maybe we had managed our lead better than I first thought.

As the day progressed, I started to add together the possible factors for our deep defending:

* After six weeks out and no warm-up games, Tom Eastman didn’t need an afternoon running around chasing. Far better to sit back and let the game come to him.

* Cameron James was carrying a knock and not fully mobile, so the same applied to him.

* To put an extra man in midfield (which we eventually did when Tarique Fosu came on with Pryke tiring mentally), we would be left with one up front which worked dismally against Mansfield.

* If we went to four at the back, we would lose our most incisive attacking outlet: Brennan Dickenson.

To start with it niggled me how deep we defended, but by the time all the pieces had fitted into place, I was beginning to think we had witnessed some tactical genius at work.

This may or may not be the case. One, or some, or none of these tactical calculations might have been what was going through the coaches' minds as they decided the gameplan for the second half.

The whole point of this long stream of consciousness is this: down on the touchline decisions have to be made in minutes, if not seconds.

I have managed a humble village side and was quite surprised how many doubting voices there are in your head when it comes to making tactical switches.

You soon learn to follow your instinct, as it’s one of the few things that rarely fails.

However, the decision was reached on Saturday.

It was the right one.

My belief is that John McGreal and Steve Ball earned their spurs on Saturday.

The bonus that there were also lessons to be learned; the sort of lessons you normally only learn in defeat.

How nice to learn them in victory, by doing the right thing.

(PS - If we are 2-0 up at Notts at half-time tomorrow, I’ll still be shouting for us to not defend too deep!)