Hadley Wood & Wingate 4 - 2 Winslow United

Hadley Wood & Wingate record first win in Spartan South Midlands League Division One

Hadley Wood & Wingate finally got their first win after two defeats in a row with a hard fought 4-2 victory against Winslow United in an action packed game at the Maurice Rebak Stadium.

The start of the action was dominated by Hadley Wood with chances for debutants Andreas Kyprianou and Jake Casey in the first 10 minutes. The opener for Hadley Wood came out of nothing and was a fantastic strike by Williams Agyei-Danquah on 14 minutes. Agyei-Danquah received the ball 35 yards out and sent a powerful shot towards goal. The shot hit the underside of the bar and bounced off of goalkeepers back and into the net.

However, five minutes later Winslow United equalised with a route one routine. Owusu Kyeremateng in the Winslow goal sent a long goal kick up the field. It was controlled by Drew Witten who then sent a pass through the Hadley Wood defence to Charlie Flanagan. With the Hadley Wood defence appealing for offside, Flanagan slotted the ball past Ross Weinrabe to make it 1-1.

It only took two minutes before Hadley Wood retook the lead and it was Agyei-Danquah who doubled his tally for the game with another super strike. Jake Casey had a shot blocked which fell to the edge of the box where Agyei-Danquah was on hand to strike the ball into the top right hand corner of the goal.

Before half time Winslow pulled back another equaliser and the sides went into the break level at 2-2.

The second half started slow in comparison to the first half until on the 64th minute a long ball was sent down by Winslow towards Flanagan but Weinrabe got to the ball first as the two collided. A small scuffle between the two took place with Flanagan seemingly coming off worse. The referee spoke to both captains about the incident, showed a yellow card to Flanagan and sent off Weinrabe for kicking out. With no goalkeeper on the bench for Hadley Wood the gloves were given to Kyprianou.

Winslow piled pressure onto Hadley Wood's 10 men and nearly took the lead when a cross was punched away by Kyprianou to the edge of the box and fell to Winslow who struck the ball with Kyprianou off his line but it was cleared off the line by Amon Walton Owen and out for a corner, which was subsequently headed over on 71 minutes.

Five minutes later Kyprianou pulled off a great face save with Winslow through one on one as Jason Costello could not beat Kyprianou.

With time running out and the game looking even with chances at both ends it was Hadley Wood's 10 men who took the lead through a controversial penalty. Kirk McPherson crossed from the right and Casey attempted an overhead kick but as he jumped up for it he was bundled to the ground by Winslow and the referee awarded the penalty. McPherson stepped up for the penalty and slotted it low to the keepers left into the bottom corner with three minutes left.

The scoring was not done as Winslow pushed men forwarded Hadley Wood were able to seal the win with Bradley Marriott making a marauding run from centre back through Winslow and passed the ball to Walton Owen to slot home for 4-2.

Hadley Wood next travel to Risborough Rangers next Saturday.