Canvey Island 4 Hendon 1

Whilst Kevin Maclaren’s two yellow cards were a little harsh, neither sanction appeared intrinsically wrong. The same could not be said for the straight reds shown to centre-backs Daniel Sintim and Michael Peacock.

The match could, and probably should, have ended as an eight-a-side contest, in which case Hendon might have had a chance of getting something out of it. Sadly the referee – and his performance – will be the only one remembered on a difficult afternoon.

The Greens named an unchanged starting 11, and the only two changes to the 16 which won at Aveley were on the bench, Aaron Morgan and Under-18s player Bradley Ambrose taking the places of James Parker and Danny Dyer.

Canvey Island’s groundsman deserves a huge amount of credit for preparing such a good surface. He had worked on it for seven hours on the morning of the game, but he could do nothing about the wind, which was forecast to be gusting at 40mph during the game and it made the match something of a lottery even before the cards came out.

Hendon had the wind at their backs in the first half and didn’t really use it well. Too many passes were overhit and Greg Ngoyi and Belal Aite-Ouakrim were given little service. That said, it was the Greens who took the lead after 16 minutes, courtesy of a penalty decision, disputed by many in the ground, but which was absolutely correct.

A ball into the penalty area bounced higher than John Easterford expected. His miscontrol was only slight, but it was enough for Ngoyi to take the ball off his toe and Easterford, in attempting to get a second touch, managed only to trip the Hendon man, who fell on the defender’s leg.

Easterford lay on the ground in discomfort as the referee pointed to the penalty spot and while a number of Canvey outfielders disputed the decision, goalkeeper James Russell told them that the referee’s call was spot on. It was a complete accident, but it was a foul inside the penalty area. At the time, the lack of card sanction against Easterford seemed to be the right decision.

Once Easterford had been helped from the pitch – he was back a minute or so later, and didn’t seem unduly inconvenienced thereafter – Jamie BUSBY took the spot kick and sent Russell the wrong way with a very confident strike.

The wind certainly was troublesome for the Hendon defence, especially for Sintim, whose a misplaced clearance looped towards his own goal and his blushes were saved by a retreating Berkley Laurencin. The goalkeeper himself had a couple of awkward moments in the first half, but none as painful as the one suffered by Jonathan Coke.

He was elbowed off the ball by Danny Heale, an incident not seen by the referee. However, he spoke to his assistant, who must have seen something because Heale was immediately shown a yellow card. Of the four options open to the referee, he made the only wrong one: if the assistant saw a deliberate elbow, it had to be a red card; if it was an accident, then there should have been no card at all; if there had been no contact, Coke should have been cautioned.

The referee had no hesitation about the next incident, the penalty which changed the game. A free kick from Matt Game was floating into the wind towards the Hendon penalty area. Easterford got in front of Sintim and was trying to reach the ball when he was pushed in the back. There is no question about the penalty decision – it was correctly awarded.

However, Easterford was some yards from the ball, which was holding up in the wind. Quite how the referee could decide that this was denying an obvious goalscoring opportunity is utterly bewildering. The fact remains he did, and Sintim was banished from the field. Robbie KING drove the penalty down the middle, past the dive of Laurencin for the equaliser.

With no natural central defender on the bench, Hendon elected to move Casey Maclaren into the centre-back role and not change the remaining personnel. The Greens, however, still failed to make good use of the wind, which showed no signs of abating or swinging to another direction.

Late in the first half, Chris Moore, the tough centre half who has made life miserable for strikers around the Ryman League for almost a decade tangled with Ngoyi. He appeared to strike the Hendon man, but the referee, who saw something, saw fit to deliver only a lecture.

Yellow cards were then shown to Game and Scott Cousins, the Hendon skipper apparently for reacting to a nasty, late challenge.

When the half-time whistle went, the feeling among the Hendon faithful was that it would require a magnificent second half performance for any points to be won. Before play resumed, Hendon replaced Lubomir Guentchev and Ngoyi with Eddie Munnelly and Aaron Morgan, respectively.

Morgan soon had a great chance to restore the Hendon lead when he was put through by Aite-Ouakrim. He took a touch too many, allowing Russell to narrow the angle, and then fired the ball into the side-netting.

A bad afternoon went horribly wrong over the next seven minutes. First a cross from Alex Rhodes picked out an unmarked Jay CURRAN, well inside the penalty area. He hit the ball, first time and directed it past the exposed Laurencin.

Kevin Maclaren then was a tad late in attempted block of a clearance from Frank Everett and received a second yellow card. Having been cautioned for a foul in the first half, it was a challenge that did not need to be made – it was 10 yards from the Canvey penalty area – and it invited the card-happy referee to pull out yellow and red ones to show to Maclaren.

With nine men, kicking into the wind, Hendon moved into damage limitation mode. The Gulls had a number of chances to extend their lead, but they were profligate in front of goal. They should, however, have had a second penalty – and the other Maclaren probably dismissed – when Curran appeared to be pushed in the back as he rose to meet another Rhodes cross.

To the amazement and bemusement of all concerned, the referee produced a yellow card and showed it to Curran for simulation. The referee’s next card was a red for Peacock for, again, denying an obvios goalscoring opportunity which it wasn’t. Curran was given a clear sight of goal, having got goalside of Peacock and he unleashed a powerful shot, moments before Peacock clattered into him. Once more, the decision to award a free-kick was correct, and a yellow card would not have been inappropriate, but as the obvious goalscoring opportunity had already been taken – irrespective that it had been spurned – it was not a red card offence as such.

To pour salt on the already gaping wound, HEALE, who should have been off the pitch for his first-half attack on Coke, drove the free-kick past the wall and Laurencin, finding the net just inside the left post.

To Canvey’s credit they could have piled on the agony for Hendon. Instead, they withdrew Curran and Heale, as well as Easterford, while the Greens brought on James Burgess to shore up the under-manned rearguard – Aite-Ouakrim the man sacrificed.

As the game moved into stoppage time, Canvey added a fourth goal when substitutes Hussein Isa and Leon Gordon combined for the latter to register as his shot hit the inside of the post and bounced into the net.

After the match, Gary McCann made the following observation, “I just don’t know what to say.” It was something that every Hendon person at the Brockwell Stadium could sympathise with. He did say, a couple of days later, that he was proud of the way that the team kept their discipline in the face of all the things that went against them.

Team: Laurencin, Coke, Cousins, C. Maclaren, Sintim, Peacock, Guentchev (Munnelly, HT), K. Maclaren, Ngoyi (Morgan, HT), Aite-Ouakrim (Burgess, 77), Busby. Unused subs: Ambrose, Haule.