Leiston 3 (3) v Romford 2 (0) – Attendance 209

During this time the home side built up a commanding three goal lead which all came as a result of incisive through balls to Michael Brothers’ who scored a hat-trick. The first of these was on just 3 minutes when he blasted in a right foot volley which gave Lamar Johnson in the visiting goal no chance whatsoever and the second and third were on 18 and 22 minutes respectively which came from low cross shots.

From this moment on Boro settled down to their task a little better, contained the home forwards better and began to mount counter attacks into their hosts’ half whenever possible. Try as they could they were unable to reduce their three goal deficit which is how the score remained at half time.

In the second half Romford came out and began to play in a more positive fashion and quickly took command just as the home side had in the first and reduced their deficit to just one with a brace of well worked goals from Kurt Smith on 53 and 55 minutes.

From this moment on it looked as though just one team, the Boro, was going to score and as the match moved into the latter part of the half they made a number of substitutions to freshen their attacking options.

With their opponents defending desperately they mounted attack after attack but were finally unable to get that all important equaliser although it took the desperate finger tips of home keeper Louis Johnson to just touch substitute Andy Edmunds’ last minute on target long range volley over his crossbar to prevent that happening.

So this remarkable ‘game of two halves’ came to an end. A game which seemed out of Romford’s reach at half time yet, with a little more luck, could have resulted in an unlikely win for them at the final whistle.

Romford squad: Johnson, Ottley, Seymour J.Barry ©, Toms, Bingham, Mackin, Sullivan; Smith (Reynolds 82), Isa (Edmunds 86), Oates (Odedoyin 59). Substitute not used: Anderson (GK).