YOU WOULD expect to have trouble cold-starting an engine in January, not the middle of August.

But Pompey had the patience and persistence to keep trying until the motor coughed and then purred nicely - the crucial spark being provided by a breakthrough that won't appear on any goals-of-the-season video.

As Rory Allen cut the ball back from the bye-line Stefani Miglioranzi was the lone blue shirt among a gaggle of Stockport men. They all collided in a heap and the ball trickled over the line.

Miglioranzi claimed it but Mike Flynn's ample buttocks probably provided the last touch. That goal, though, set Pompey alight and a finely crafted second saw them home in a canter.

For an hour they had huffed and puffed against a Stockport side who provided a different type of challenge.

To say that Stockport are a big side is an understatement. Pompey's mid-fielders looked like little bits that had fallen off Laurent d'Jaffo, Brett Angell and Tony Dinning and manager Alan Ball's recall of Adrian Whitbread to the centre of defence was fully justified to combat the aerial threat of Angell and d'Jaffo.

For that first hour, Stockport looked like table-top material.

They were well organised around Flynn and Mike McIntosh at the back and worked like mules for new boss Andy Kilner, the 32-year-old youth development officer who was appoint-ed in the summer.

The sheer physical presence of d'Jaffo and Angell dictate they are going to be a handful for most defences and Whitbread and Jason Cundy had to stand up to them.

And even on such a bright sunshiney day, it must have been a cloud on Ball's horizon that his midfield lack a natural tackler. Miglioranzi, Alan Mc-Loughlin and Jeff Peron pass the ball to death and are good offensive players but there was a moment in the first half when the ball flew around in the midfield and provided adequate proof as every 50-50 challenge inside a hectic 30 seconds was won by a Stockport player.

It may sound carping but if Pompey do harbour any sort of promotion aspirations, they will have to harden up their act. Yet they kept their passing going, as you would expect from a Ball team, and got their reward with the cushioning second when McLoughlin fed a perfect pass inside Sean Connelly for Fitzroy Simpson to find Rory Allen at the near post.

It was Allen's second goal in consecutive League games and he's beginning to show why Ball splashed out £1 million for him.

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