Hendon slumped to a second successive defeat, this time to Ryman League Premier Division leaders, Carshalton Athletic at Claremont Road on Saturday afternoon. Once again, a truly substandard first half performance left the Greens with far too much to do to save the game.

Ricci Crace came into the side at the expense of Eugene Ofori and Mark Burgess replaced Andy Cook in the only changes to the team outclassed in the FA Cup tie a week earlier.

Unlike in the game at Grays, Hendon werent completely outplayed by Carshalton. The Robins despite sitting at the top of the table did very little, a fine work-rate and team cohesion apart, to show why they are in such a lofty position.

A rock-hard pitch and swirling wind conspired to ensure the game was, to be kind, error-strewn, albeit shaded by Carshalton, who had less trouble in finding their wide men, something Hendon conspicuously lacked with Steve Forbes and Iain Duncan nominally filling those roles. In the fact, in the opening 35-odd minutes, neither team came even remotely close to opening the scoring.

That changed in the 39th minute. A long diagonal pass from the left side somehow eluded the Hendon defence and when a shot came in, it was blocked. The ball was then fired towards goal by Des BOATENG but, before it could cross the line, Jon-Barrie Bates in a desperate attempt to clear the danger, made sure it did.

Bates, who had been cautioned after 21 minutes following a clash with Kunle Olusesi, almost completed a memorable first half with a fine equaliser, but his curling shot from 25 yards dipped just behind the crossbar with Stuart Searle well beaten.

In stoppage time at the end of the first half, Scott Cousins curled in a free-kick that proved to be an easy catch for Searle. It was, at least, an effort on target.

Seven minutes after the break, Carshalton stretched their advantage. A diagonal ball caught out Richard Evans, who was enduring a miserable afternoon. Ali RUSSELL got on the end of it, looked up, saw Dave King coming off his line to narrow the angle, and scored with a well-placed, if wind-assisted lob that ended up just inside the angle of post and crossbar.

Desperate measures were the order of the day for Hendon and these were taken in the 62nd minute, when Martin Randall and Evans were replaced by Ofori and Andre Delisser respectively. Hendon went to a 3-man defence, Burgess joining Mark Cooper and Steve Butler.

Delisser immediately gave an option out wide and Carshalton were now outnumbered and outperformed in midfield, leaving their strikers even more isolated than Randall and Crace had been. The result was also, finally, a much more open and interesting spectacle.

Less than a minute after the double change, a Hendon corner was not cleared and Forbes had a shot that was hacked off the line by Michael Johnson. In the 72nd minute, another quick Hendon break resulted in a great chance for Delisser, but he wanted one touch too many and Searle was able to smother his shot.

Six minutes later, Hendon got their lifeline. Ofori and Ellis Hooper chased a downfield ball from Duncan. The centre-half went to ground after colliding with OFORI and it left the striker with only Searle to beat, which he did easily.

Ofori almost grabbed his second a couple of minutes later, but Searle was again quickly off his line to block his shot. Johnson, whose heroics had initially kept Carshaltons two-goal advantage, almost restored it, when he ran onto a short pass from Olusesi, but his shot flew over Kings bar.

Hendon quickly attacked and when the ball was crossed in from the left wing, Butler launched himself at it. His header beat Searle but bounced, agonisingly, a few inches the wrong side of the far post.

Both Russell and Olusesi then forced King into making saves as Hendon left spaces in defence in their vain bid to get an equaliser. On the evidence of the final 30 minutes, a draw might have been deserved; but after the first hour, the Greens were lucky that they were close enough to have been in a position even to have achieved it.

Manager Dave Anderson pulled no punches after the game. He said, "There is a big question mark over the squad at the moment. The question is, Have we, as a squad peaked? and if that is the case we will have to change.

"I think it is time to make a change. We have looked stale in recent games and for the first hour today we were awful."