The Woods finally returned to the Acretweed Stadium for their first home game in their pre-season schedule and notched a comfortable win over fellow step four side Aylesbury United to finish their seven-match campaign with an unbeaten record.

While Manager Scott Dash would have preferred to have his full squad available, he was forced to rest a few players with slight injuries or illness with Sacha M'Baye, Andrew Tirivanhu, Chris Gosling, Luke Holness and Kiye Martin all missing while Dan Pett remains unavailable until September. Ben Pattie, who has missed pre-season with a broken ankle, is now back in training.

That did of course give others the chance to impress and the central defensive pairing of teenagers Imran Uche and Ethan Flanagan certainly did that, almost helping the Woods to a clean sheet with performances that belied their experience.

Resplendent in their new kit, sponsored by Northwood Paper under their product "Rhino", Northwood took just four minutes to take the lead. Winning a free-kick close to the corner, Matt Cooper fired in a ball that Harry Lodovica met with a simple header that flew past goalkeeper Jack Hopwood.

The Ducks were restricted to a couple of long-range effort that flew wide of the goal but Northwood could have had a second on 24 minutes as Karl Stevenson threaded a neat ball through to Alex Witham and though his strike from the edge of the box beat the 'keeper it also just cleared the bar.

The Woods continued to shade the half, with the sometimes swirling and gusty wind mainly at their backs, but the final ball was a little lacking at times. The in-form Kweku Lucan enjoyed a good run from the left and cut the ball back to Cooper but his shot deflected up and over for a corner five minutes before half-time. From that, it was Marley Hamilton who stole in for a header which was just inches over the top.

The only change at half-time was for a triallist goalkeeper, replacing Rob Partington who had kept his third successive first-half clean sheet. Ten minutes into the second-half the lead was doubled in similar fashion, this time a corner curled in by Cooper and this time Uche flicked a neat header in to make it 2-0.

Hamilton went close again with a good strike that was beaten out by Hopwood but the Woods were moving the ball well and they notched a third goal after 70 minutes as a ball was only half-cleared to Lodovica just outside the box and he drilled a low shot into the net for his second of the game.

The introduction of a couple of lively forwards saw the Ducks go closer in the final stages and they did grab a consolation goal in the last minute of the game as Harry Jones got away from his marker and fired into the top corner.

Overall a good result for Northwood, who lost 1-3 to the same opponents a week before the start of last season and with two wins over Southern League Step 4 sides over the past two weekends; it should give them plenty of confidence prior to the first BetVictor Isthmian League game next Saturday against a strong Westfield side.