Hendon advanced to the 3rd qualifying round of the FA Cup with a 4-0 defeat of Enfield at Claremont Road on Saturday afternoon. Thirty years ago, this tie would probably have attracted a crowd of around 1,500-2,000 and probably quite a bit of media attention. On Saturday one-tenth of the crowd was in attendace and there were probably two dozen more interesting ties, except in the eyes of the truly committed.

With Martin Randall, Mark Burgess and Jon-Barrie Bates all suspended, and Dale Binns and Scott Cousins both injured, it meant the team pretty much picked itself, with Simon Huggett, Dave Hunt and Ricardo Alves joining Luke Thornton on the bench.

The opening half-hour was unmemorable in the extreme as Enfield, playing just their 6th match of the season after suffering from relegation last season and a League-enforced suspension throughout August, tried to make an early breakthrough, but full-backs Richard Evans and James Burgess and central defenders Steve Butler and Mark Cooper comfortably held off Jeff Hammond and Paul Armstrong.

Dave King had to deal with a couple of high crosses, but didn't have to make a difficult save until the second half and then he was equal to Armstrong's shot and a long cross from Greg Howell either side of Hendon's second goal.

Enfield had suffered a blow when Joe Deeney limped off after 16 minutes, the victim of a hamstring strain. He was replaced by Howell.

In the 35th minute, Steve Forbes made a foray through midfield, riding a couple of challenges. He sent the ball out to Andre Delisser, whose control let him down and it struck him on the hand, squirming beyond both him and the onrushing Eugene Ofori.

As luck would have it, no Enfield defender intervened (nor any appealed for handball) and the ball fell to Ricci CRACE, who wasted no time in slamming the ball past James Courtnage into the Enfield net.

From them on only one team looked likely to score and it wasn't the visitors. Both Ofori and Delisser wasted good chances to score before half-time. At the break, Enfield brought on veteran striker Dwight Marshall for the out-of-sorts Jeff Hammond and, 6 minutes in the second half, manager Terry Back made his final change, replacing Sean Carr with Adrian Griffith.

In the 55th minute, after keeping possession for a number of passes, the ball was laid back into the path of Richard Evans, who took a touch before delivering a cross to beyond the far post. Iain DUNCAN, swathed in bandages following a work accident that left him with a nasty cut to his forehead, called off Crace before sending a spectacular diving header past Courtnage.

Four minutes later, as Marshall came back to defend a corner, he called out, "Come on lads, let's go out with pride," obviously believing Hendon's 2-goal lead was insurmountable. Seconds later, it certainly was, as Duncan's deep corner was headed back by Andy Cook and BUTLER redirected just inside the left post.

In the 65th minute, BUTLER finished off another corner from Duncan, but this time it was Crace who jumped in front of Courtnage to direct the ball towards his teammate.

Hunt, Alves and Huggett replaced, Forbes, Ofori and Delisser and even if the Greens became a little unbalanced, it had little bearing on the course of the game.

Late on, Howell was cautioned for a challenge Alves and then squared up to Butler, reminiscent of 25 years ago when their dads Ron and Roy played in the same fixture. At the same time, Hunt, on his debut, also yellow for simulation, a terrible decision by the otherwise excellent referee Peter Yeo, who failed to spot the Hendon man having his leg taken away by a mistimed challenge inside the penalty area.

Hendon boss Dave Anderson said, "We had to make a lot of changes and we wanted to be solid at the start. We didn't want to go all-out from the kick-off and concede an early goal.

"The sole thing was to get into the hat for the next round and we have achieved that. It didn't matter whether it was 10-9 or 1-0; winning was all that we cared about."