Harlow Town 2 (1) v Romford 0 (0) - Attendance 160

On the overall balance of play in the first quarter of the game the visitors should have built up a comfortable lead but were unable to capitalize on their initial first half superiority.
However, it was Harlow who almost opened the scoring in the first few minutes but a Boro defender was in place to head a goal bound ball off his line at the right hand upright.
The match then became a succession of Romford attacks and they thought they had taken the lead on ten minutes when Richard Oxby headed in the rebound from a blocked header by Kurt Smith from a Paul Kavanagh right wing corner only to be given offside.
Play continued more or less in the same fashion with the occasional Hawks counter attack and, on 22 minutes, Smith himself ran through on a Jay Taylor through ball to hit the ball into the home net only for him to be given offside himself this time.
Five minutes after this Harlow took an unexpected lead when no-one in the Boro defence took responsibility for dealing with a Wayne Grant run down the right and he was allowed to blast the ball past Danny Mullrooney in the visitors’ goal.
From then until the half time whistle Romford fought hard to get back on terms to no avail. A number of visitors free kicks were wasted, through balls were played too long and Smith, was again unlucky with a header wide of the target. So the break came with the Hawks still hanging on to their one goal lead.
Harlow, featuring a new management team, several new players, urged on by a very vocal home support and boosted by being a goal ahead started the second half a very different side from the first.
They gradually began to take control of the game and, on 60 minutes, increased their lead with a cross field move which gave Jason Grima a free run in on the right to score past Mulrooney.
From then on the match was more or less decided. Harlow continued to pass freely and Boro scrapped but were unable to reduce the deficit as hard as they tried. The nearest the visitors came to doing this was a goal mouth scramble in the dying minutes when an Oxby free kick from the left was eventually hit over the home crossbar by new signing Matt Toms.
So a game which Romford had started with such high hopes ended with the home side gaining only their third win of the season so far and the visitors being unable to add to their points tally to take them further away from the relegation zone.

Romford squad: Mulrooney, Truman, Taylor (Neville 61), Toms, Willis, Gammons (Nelson 46), Port (Senghore 71), Oxby, Smith, Thomas, Kavanagh. Substitutes not used: Skinner and Mathews (GK).

Romford now have three league matches to round off 2009. This coming Saturday, December 19th, they host Cheshunt kick off 3 pm. On Boxing Day December 26th they visit Ilford for a 1 o’clock kick off and complete the list with a home game against Redbridge on Tuesday evening December 29th kick off 7.45 pm.