ROMFORD 3 (2) - (1) 1 Chatham Town Attendance 107 - Ship Lane‏

Chatham started the game brightly with Aaron Omand saving well from one effort and another chance going over the bar, before Romford earned a corner from their first significant attack. The defence cleared the ball but it was hit back in to Loui Hazelwood who combined well with Abs Seymour before the latter drove into the box and was brought down. The stand in skipper dusted himself down and stepped up to the spot only to see his tame effort saved low by the Chatham keeper. However he was quickest to the rebound and was able to bundle the ball home. Chatham could have equalised almost straight away, but the forward fired over when it looked easier to have scored. On twenty-two minutes Loui Hazelwood operating in a free role picked up the ball thirty yards from goal and without further ado fired an unstoppable shot into the top corner, an effort which even eclipsed his fantastic strike from the previous match. Romford then nearly got a third before the break but Joe Scott had a header saved after Loui Hazelwood put in a great cross and Callum Ibe shot across goal when he found space for himself in the box.

Quite early in the second half Romford gave Chatham a way back into the game when a short back pass was pounced upon by a visiting forward who had to be brought down by Aaron Omand, and former Romford player Joe Bingham sent the keeper the wrong way to score from the spot. With the way things have gone in recent weeks heads could have dropped but Romford now showed some character, and worked tremendously hard to deny Chatham any opportunities to equalise. Understandably there were still blue and gold nerves on and off the field as the clock ticked down but they were all eased when Nick Reynolds got Boro’s third after cutting in from the left and firing into the bottom corner during added time to clinch the league double over their relegation rivals.
So ironically, with senior players still unavailable Romford bagged a very valuable three points from a game in which they perhaps did not dominate play as in so many previous good performances which had gone unrewarded.

ROMFORD (2) 3 ABS SEYMOUR 15, LOUI HAZELWOOD 22, NICK REYNOLDS 90

CHATHAM TOWN (0) 1 BINGHAM 53 PEN.

ROMFORD: AARON OMAND, SAMUEL KEMP, LUKE MCLEAVY, JAMES ISHMAIL, JAMIE BYRNE, JERMAINE FINDLATOR (ROBBIE NORRIS 58), LOUI HAZELWOOD (DANIEL JONES 80), ABS SEYMOUR, JOE SCOTT, TYRONE SCARLETT (NICK REYNOLDS 67), CALLUM IBE SUBS NOT USED DAVID OTTLEY