COGGESHALL TOWN 3 (1) - (0) 1 ROMFORD Attendance 108 - West Street

Kicking into a strong headwind Romford more than matched Coggeshall during the opening exchanges. The returning Greg Akpele was close to playing in forward Gabiel Kellum but the Coggeshall defender was strong and ushered the ball back to the keeper while at the other end Michael Gyasi fired wide from distance. In the twenty-second minute the hosts earned a corner that was played short and worked into the area where centre back Tyler Corlett fired low into the bottom corner to make it one-nil. A few minutes later Romford tried to clear their lines but the ball ricocheted back off their own player and out for another corner. The cross was headed towards goal and looked to be going in before Akpele produced a stunning one handed save which would have been great except that he is not the keeper and so was correctly shown the red card. His judgement seemed to have been correct when Boro keeper Harry Aldridge saved the penalty with his feet. For the rest of the half Aldridge then produced a stunning display of goal keeping, stopping numerous home attempts while for Romford, Chris Taylor had a volley blocked before the half time whistle rang out with Romford only a goal behind.

Aldridge had to be alert early on denying the home forwards before a massive goal mouth scramble was eventually cleared by the Boro defence. Taylor was fouled on the edge of the box in the fifty-first minute and rather than shooting Kellum played the free kick short to Nick Reynolds but the unmarked forward took a touch before shooting and the chance was quickly snuffed out. Coggeshall were keeping the ball and moving it well, stretching the visiting defence and in the fifty-six minute Tyler Brampton found space to turn home a slide rule pass. The Seed Growers grabbed their third near the end when a long shot sneaked into the far corner but Romford never gave up with Reynolds heading home a long ball forward to reduce the arrears deep into injury time.

COGGELSHALL (1) 3 CORLETT 22, BRAMPTON 56, ALLEN 81

ROMFORD (0) 1 NICK REYNOLDS 90+2

ROMFORD: HARRY ALDRIDGE, NATHAN JOSEPH, GREG AKPELE, HENRY FISHER, AYO OLUKOGA, DANNY COSSINGTON, CHRIS TAYLOR, MALAKI TOUSSAINT, GABRIEL KELLUM (TERLOCHAN SINGH 65), NICK REYNOLDS, KHADEAN CAMPBELL (RIDWAN HUSSEIN 78) SUBS NOT USED TOBY BARLOW, DANNY NESBITT