Hendon slipped to their second straight defeat on Tuesday evening at Claremont Road, Heybridge Swifts coming away with a 1-0 victory in a dour game between two poor sides.

Manager Dave Anderson made just the one change to the starting line up, with Richard Evans returning in place of Mark Burgess, who in turn dropped to the bench. Burgess was joined by Andy Cook and the returning Gary McCann, who replaced Dave Hunt and the injured Luke Thornton respectively.

The game started quietly and it wasn't until the 11th minute that the Greens had their first real attack on goal, a deep cross from Evans finding Martin Randall who was only able to direct his header wide of the goal.

Just four minutes later Heybridge took the lead when Bertie Brayley scored from close range following up from a superb Dave King save. Unfortunately King was left fuming at his defenders who had been slow to react in clearing the ball, not for the first time this season.

In the 20th minute the Swifts had a clear cut claim for a penalty turned down. It was clear, even to Hendon fans at the opposite end of the ground, that a Hendon defender had handled the ball but referee Dave Bushell, who had a perfectly reasonable game overall, turned the appeals down much to the surprise of the vast majority in the ground.

Most of Hendon's attacks in the first half were created by Scott Cousins, but his crosses and corners were comfortably dealt with by the Heybridge defence. In the 38th minute a clearance by King caused problems in the Heybridge defence, Eugene Ofori let the ball run but scuffed his shot into the arms of the keeper.

Shortly before half time Andre Delisser was fouled by Danny Barber close to the 18 yard box and the defender was cautioned for his challenge. Cousins stepped up to take the set piece but fired it wide for a goal kick.

Hendon made a change at half time when Ricci Crace replaced Delisser, but Crace's introduction failed to introduce any real spark into the game. The opening exchanges of the second period were pretty much a non-event until Ofori fired the ball over the bar on the hour mark. Just a minute later, Martin Randall picked up a booking for an innocuous looking challenge on Barber.

In the 70th minute Crace forced a save out of visiting keeper Darren Placid, but the rebound fell to the wrong foot of Jon-Barrie Bates who was unable to get enough power behind his shot.

Shortly after, Hendon broke from midfield and the ball was fed through to Randall by Crace. However Lee Kersey pulled off an excellent tackle before Randall could fire off a shot.

Ten minutes later Randall returned the favour and fed Crace who saw his shot saved by Placid. With a minute to go another effort from Crace was deflected off a prone Ofori which forced Placid into a good save. However had the ball gone in, it would have been disallowed as Ofori was lying in an offside position, and having been hit by the ball would have been ruled to have been interfering with play.

Heybridge made a late substitution, Andrew Tomlinson taking over a minute to leave the pitch, but the away side held on through injury time to take the three points back to Essex, and leave Hendon lying in 11th place in the table.

Speaking after the game Manager Dave Anderson commented: "We were way below par tonight, it was like Sutton revisited and the performance was simply not acceptable. We need to work harder at bringing more consistency as we are very much a Jekyll and Hyde team at the moment."