The Town Under-18s made it two wins in a week as Joe Deeney’s side beat Exeter 3-0 at The Brache on Saturday.

The young Hatters went ahead in the 31st minute when from an excellent Harry Fox corner Archie Shepherd sent a glancing header past the visitors’ goalkeeper.

Having spurned a number of good chances to go further in front the Town did double their lead shortly before half-time when Dylan Stitt, pictured above, was fouled in the box and the Northern Ireland youth international converted the penalty.

After the break the Hatters came close to scoring twice in a flurry of chances immediately after the restart but the third goal did arrive on 49 minutes when Samuel Hincapie-Alfonso was alive in the box to guide home a mis-placed pass across from the Exeter defence past the keeper.

As the visitors chased a route back into the game the Town defence held firm and, after conceding four goals in a 6-4 win over Ipswich in the match prior, were able to keep a clean sheet thanks to some excellent defending.

“The most pleasing thing for me was keeping that clean sheet,” coach Deeney said afterwards: “The lads have worked incredibly hard to put in the work to not concede and overall I was really happy with the performance and attitude.

“At half-time although we were ahead, I felt we never really kicked on and laboured at times despite controlling the game.

“I said to the boys at the break that we need to raise our intensity levels as I thought we were a bit too passive in our press at times.

“But we came out in the second half and started really well and could have been out of sight in the early stages.

“There are always lessons you can learn even when you win and we could have been more ruthless in front of goal but overall I was full of praise for the boys.”

Town: Thomas, Roberts-Edema, Fox, Ioannides, Emery, Sampson, Harvey, Stitt, Hincapie-Alfonso, Shepherd, Tralist.

Subs: M. Takawira, Coyne, T. Takawira, Evans, Ed-Okungbowa.