Hendon made it three Ryman League Premier Division wins in a week and lifted themselves further away from the foot of the table after a 1-0 victory over Folkestone Invicta.

It must be said, however, that in at least a dozen of Hendon's 17 League defeats this season, the Greens have been distinctly unlucky to get nothing from the game; on this occasion, and probably for the first time in 2006-07, it was they who were lucky to get the spoils.

With Brian Haule absent nursing an ankle injury, James Parker returned to the starting line-up after missing almost a month.

A look at the League table shows just why both teams are in their lowly positions: an inability to score goals although Hendon have rather improved in that category recently.

Both teams were very good in closing down forwards when they were in attacking positions which meant that the few efforts that were attempted all came either from long range or were taken early. The result was that neither Richard Wilmot of Hendon nor Richard Martin of Folkestone were unduly troubled all evening.

Dean Green, Davis Haule, Belal Aiteouakrim, Marc Leach and Lee O'Leary all tried their luck with shots, but only Leach and Aiteoakrim put theirs on target and while a defender blocked the former's effort, Martin did well to claw away the shot from Aiteouakrim.

Folkestone had a few half-chances of their own, but again accuracy was not their forte and a succession of corners were dealt with quite comfortably by the Hendon defence. Wilmot did make one good low save, but he generally made the right choices when it came to punching or catching crosses he went for.

The consensus at half-time was that a single goal would win the game, and that proved to be exactly right. But no one could have imagined quite how a good a goal it would be to decide the points.

It came just five minutes into the second half, during which time Hendon had kept the ball well, but not looked like finding a chink in the visitors' defence. Then Green took the ball across the pitch just outside the penalty area, looking vainly for room to shoot.

He passed to Aiteouakrim, who also was shut down very effectively and had no space. The young striker had Wayne O'Sullivan outside him, but instead played a short pass to Jamie Busby, who let fly from 25 yards. Martin's full length dive never looked like getting close to the ball as it flew into the top right corner of the goal.

Folkestone took control of the game from this point and spent the next 40 minutes, plus five of stoppages, hammering at the Hendon goal, looking for an equaliser. The Greens were forced into some pretty basic defending, but it was effective - after a fashion. For all their pressure, Folkestone forced Wilmot into making only one half-difficult save - keeping out a drive from Ellis Remy.

All too often, Invicta delivered crosses that were too close to the big goalkeeper and he was able to deal with all that came his way. Just about the only outlet for Hendon in this increasingly frantic period was O'Sullivan, who made three breaks down the right flank.

As Folkestone's frustration mounted so their discipline began to desert them and both Michael Everitt and Samuel Kola Okikiolu were cautioned for late challenges. Hendon players, however, kept their heads and when the referee blew the final whistle there was as much relief as there was satisfaction.

"We were our own worst enemies in the second half," admitted manager Gary McCann. "We kept dropping deeper and deeper and this invited Folkestone onto us.

"On the bench we were panicking and this transferred to the players and I was screaming at the players not to panic, while still panicking myself. But we got the result and that's what really matters."