Witham Town 3 (3) - (0) 3 ROMFORD Attendance 84 - Village Glass Stadium

Romford made nine changes from the team that got a well deserved draw against Thurrock in the week and the team played like strangers in the opening half when they had the wind against them. Unlike Tuesday where you could play football to counter the gale, this was not possible on the poor Witham pitch that had just survived an earlier pitch inspection and Romford found it hard to get the ball up to their attackers. Witham were not great either and did not seem to have that many ideas when getting into dangerous positions but they did take the lead when a corner was not cleared and Michael Osei smashed the ball home on twelve minutes via a deflection. Neither team really created anything more until in the thirty-ninth minute when a poor clearance by debutant goal keeper Richard Wray left Witham striker Lee Townrow with an open goal, but he fired the ball over the bar to the disbelief of the entire stadium. That miss however did not prove too costly as two minutes later Nathan Korentang found himself free behind the Romford defence before skipping round Wray and firing into the empty net. It went from bad to worse for the Boro when Aaron Gayle miscued a shot but the ball found Townrow who shot home right on half time.

Romford hoped for a better second half but for the first fifteen minutes they were still not at the races, which prompted manager Paul Martin to bring on Chinedu McKenzie and Akwasi Marfo who can both carry the ball with pace. This also provided the team with more width to their attacking options and on sixty nine minutes Romford earned a corner that George Woodward took short to McKenzie who returned it to the full back, and with no Witham defender closing him down, he ran into the box and fired towards the bottom corner where George Tubey stabbed the ball home from inches. This goal seemed to cause mass panic amongst the home team and some belief for the Boro, and they were now on the front foot earning another corner that found Tubey, but this time his effort was well saved. With ten minutes to go McKenzie was tugged back after getting behind the defence and from Woodward's free kick Lee Weemes cleverly flicked his header home to reduce the gap to one goal. Robbie Farrell should have equalised when a Woodward free kick found him unmarked in the the box but his header went wide as Boro continued to pile on the pressure. In the last minute of normal time Romford earned another free kick that Woodward took and shot towards the far top corner but the keeper tipped it over, and from the following corner Jake Giddings should have done better, but blasted the ball over the bar. It now looked likely that Witham would be able to hang on, but in the third minute of the allotted four minutes of added time Marfo got down the left and beat his man just outside the box. Everybody was expecting a cross into the goalmouth, but he had spotted Giddings running in from midfield and laid the ball into his path. Unperturbed by his previous miss, the Romford man coolly fired high into the top corner from the edge of the box to cap a remarkable turn around and earn Romford what looked like a very unlikely point only twenty minutes earlier.

WITHAM TOWN (3) 3 OSEI 12, KORENTANG 41, TOWNROW 44

ROMFORD (0) 3 GEORGE TUBEY 69, LEE WEEMES 80, JAKE GIDDING 90+3

ROMFORD: RICHARD WRAY, JAMES ZANELLI (ROBBIE FARRELL73), GEORGE WOODWARD, TOM POTTER, MOSHI OLAFUNISLE, JAKE GIDDINGS, GEORGE TUBEY, CONNOR GOLDSTONE (AKWASI MARFO 66), LEE WEEMES, CHRIS TAYLOR, LIAM BURGESS (CHINEDU MCKENZIE 63) SUBS NOT USED MATT FREW, HARRY CULHAM

YEELOW CARD GEORGE WOODWARD 50