Hendon were desperately unfortunately not to break their duck on Tuesday night at much-fancied Hayes & Yeading United.

Lee Allinson made three changes to the side that lost so horribly at Swindon with Tarik Moore-Azile fit to start alongside Tommy Brewer and Danny Williams replacing Frank Keita. Meanwhile, at right-back, new signing Josh Dawodu started in place of Kevin Diomande, Dawodu having signed on Tuesday morning.

The start of the match was delayed by 40-minutes due to a partial floodlight failure. Huge credit must go to the Hayes & Yeading ground staff who worked tirelessly to isolate the problem and then resolve it.

The match itself was a full-blooded affair with both sides throwing everything at it. Hayes began brightly and created the better openings in the first 25-minutes or so, without creating anything too clearcut while at the other end, Danny Williams’ pace kept the home defence on their toes.

The best chance of the opening half fell to Hendon, Joe White produced some excellent work on the left flank before standing the ball up to the far post. Arriving was Bobson Bawling, however, the winger was stretching and unable to get over the header, sending the ball over the top.

After the break, Hayes began unusually slugglishly with plenty of misplaced passes and one or two defensive slips. Hendon grew in confidence and began to play some nice stuff up to the final third where, once again, the final ball was lacking.

Frank Keita replaced the hard-working Williams and went seriously close to scoring when he latched onto a Tommy Brewer header and sent a volley no more than six inches over the top of the crossbar. Then Rohdell Gordon and Joe White both had good sights of goal and warmed the gloves of Jacob Adams in the home goal, but each time the efforts were too close to the goalkeeper.

Hayes continued to threaten on the break with the pace of Cole Brown and Moses Emmanuel keeping Brewer and Moore-Azile honest, but the better chances continued to fall to Hendon. Gordon forced another save from Adams and from the corner, Hayes broke swiftly.

Substitute Mo Bettamer released Brown down the inside left channel and the former Hendon wide-man shoed confidence and nous to fire his left-footed effort beyond Brzozowski and into the back of the net.
Shortly afterwards, Brzozowski made a superb low sprawling save to his left to push a fierce deflected shot from Nasha around the post before Hendon pushed once again for an equaliser.

The best opportunity fell to Keita who was played through on goal by White’s excellent through ball. His effort was straight at Adams when anything either side would surely have given Hendon the equaliser their efforts warranted.

As it was, Hayes were able to hold on for their second 1-0 win of the season. Hendon now turn their attention to North Leigh on Saturday in a meeting of two sides awaiting their first points of the campaign.