Hendon suffered another disappointing defeat, this time going down to a twice-taken penalty against ten-man Dartford at Princes Park. With Heybridge Swifts and Harrow Borough both winning and Margate drawing, it was a bad day all round for the Greens.

Marc Leach and Harry Hunt both returned to the starting line-up, but car trouble meant Jamie Turley could not get to Kent, so Hendon were forced into a late reshuffle with Jamie Busby getting the start. Sam Byfield and Lubomir Guentchev were the two who dropped to the subs bench.

This was a poor game, played on a very difficult pitch, especially at the lower end, where drainage problems left the penalty area heavily sanded and the ground basically dead. That said, the first-half statistics really should have been better than one red card, four yellows, and one shot on target.

After 14 minutes, Cody McDonald met a Dan Dafter free-kick with a deft header from ten yards out. Although William Viner made a fine acrobatic save, it would not have counted as the assistant referee had his flag raised for offside. Two minutes later, Brendon Cass fired wide of the target from a good position.

McDonald then went down in the penalty area, following a challenge by Leach. Home fans bayed for a spot-kick, but McDonald appeared to have stumbled over his own feet and went down several yards after passing Leach. It should be stressed this didn't appear to be a dive either, merely a player struggling to stay on his feet.

For Hendon, Brian Haule couldn’t quite bring a high ball from Lee O’Leary under control and a half-chance went begging. In the 33rd minute, Busby struck a 20-yard drive straight at Andrew Young, who had an easy save.

By this time Jamie Coyle had already been cautioned and he was joined in the book by Dafter and James Parker, while Haule, Danny Dyer, Adam Gross and Lee Noble all received warnings. All bar Noble heeded the lectures and he saw yellow just before half-time.

By this time, Dartford had been reduced to ten men. An aerial ball just outside the Hendon penalty area was contested by O’Leary and James White, but the latter led with his elbow, which connected with the Hendon player’s face. O'Leary was flat on his back as the referee showed White a red card. Although the challenge was most likely accidental, the damage to O’Leary resulted in him receiving treatment on and off the pitch for a good three minutes before he was able to resume.

For the second half, Hendon should have tried to pass their way round the short-handed Dartford team. Instead, they got dragged into playing long balls which were gobbled up by Coyle and Dafter. Then, when the opportunity presented itself, Dartford would launch quick counter-attacks led by McDonald or out wide by Ryan Hayes.

A superb save from Viner to deny McDonald kept Hendon in the game and the reaction from the bench was to send on Glenn Garner and Guentchev for Haule and Busby. Sad to say, Hendon didn’t improve for the changes.

The Greens’ tendancy to self-destruct reappeared and a loss of concentration in the middle of the defence was dealt with by the alert Viner. But in the 74th minute, Scott Shulton and Craig Vargas got into a tangle just outside their penalty area and Hayes nipped in. Before he could get more than a couple of steps inside the box, a leg snaked out and over he went.

It was an obvious penalty and there was little complaint from Hendon. Up stepped Darts skipper Tommy Osborne and he struck the ball to Viner’s left. The goalkeeper guessed correctly and pushed aside the ball but his celebrations were cut short by the referee, who ruled he had moved off his line too soon so ordered the kick to be retaken. This time OSBORNE’s placement was better and although Viner again guessed correctly, he could not keep out the ball.

Casey Maclaren came on for James Burgess as Hendon pressed for an equaliser, but they lacked the guile to find a way through. Then, with five minutes to go, in another flurry of cards from the referee, Parker received his second yellow and he was halfway across the pitch as the red card was shown to his back.

“We weren’t good enough today,” said manager Gary McCann. “Our confidence is very brittle at the moment and a number of players aren’t doing it for me. I am going to have to make some changes.”

(report by David Ballheimer - not to be reproduced without permission from the author)