Hendon 1 – 4 Wealdstone

Hendon

1 - 4

Wealdstone

KO: 0:00 | Mon 27th Dec ’04

With both sides missing a number of key players, there was a strangeness to the two line-ups, with Lee O’Leary and Leon Henderson both making their Stones 1st team debuts.

Stones got the perfect start as well – pushing forward from the off and forcing the hosts back, a long kick from Andy Carter deceived and beat the home defence and with Jolly running on, home keeper King lost his positioning and handled the ball outside his box. He was sent off and Stones scored from Beckford’s free kick, as full back Nolan the substitute keeper could only parry the ball, and O’Leary on his debut reacted first to score.

In the most part the first half lacked much entertainment for the crown, with Stones unable to break down a hard working Hendon team, while the home side lacked any real creativity to break through the visiting defence. There were two exceptions, the first when Beckford broke and Nolan fumbled the ball over the line, however his body obscured the lineman’s view and he reacted quickly enough to recover and play continued, then in the 36th minutes when Julienne broke down the wing, and drawing his defender across left space in the middle for Pickett to score an equaliser from close range.

The second half though was a different matter as stones from the start made the most of the extra man. O’Leary scored Stones second in a similar fashion to the first, from a parried free kick and a minute later Jolly seemed to have made the score three as he bundled the ball home – the Referee looked at his assistant who signalled a goal and he had run fully thirty yards towards the half way line when the Referee gave the home side a free kick , cancelling out the score.

Stones did get their third some five minutes later when Beckford got behind the defence, but he made hard work of it as his first and seco9nd attempts were saved by Nolan, who was unable to keep out the third attempt from the rebound!

Good work by Burrell and Beckford gave Jolly the opportunity to score Stones 4th (running from his own half to beat the home keeper one on one) and effectively finish the match in the 73rd minute, and Stones will be happy with the 3 points which sees them rise into the top half of the table.