Northwood Under 18 1  Harrow Borough Under 18 0

Thursday 31st March 2011

Northwood U18		Ryman Youth League Chestnut Avenue, Northwood
Chezney Cassell	1	Kick Off
Reece Fallon	2	7.45 p.m.
Gbenga Adelana	3	H/T
Jonas Charles	4	1-0
Liam McGrath	5	Scorers
D Cole-Parkes	6	Northwood
John Uche	7	Thomas
Damilola Thomas	8	Harrow
Romaine Walker	9	-
Jack Hutchinson	10
Zain Khan	11
Lamin Cole (11, 72m)	12
Richard Amofa (4, 61m)	14
Julian Smith (8, 61m)	15
-	17
-	18

The Woods moved into third place in the West Division table with this narrow victory over in-form Harrow Borough, who they also meet on Monday evening in the return fixture at Earlsmead.

It was a really strong defensive performance from both sides with chances few and far between, but Northwood got the all-important breakthrough after just seven minutes as Romaine Walker did well to prevent a deep cross from sailing off for a goal-kick, and as he hooked the ball back, it bounced up neatly for Damilola Thomas to head home.

Woods goalkeeper Chezney Cassell made one fine save to keep out the visitors but generally the home defence kept Harrow at bay, with Liam McGrath looking solid in place of the rested Sean Hollowed. Dwayne Cole-Parkes was equally impressive in the centre, while Reece Fallon looked very solid in the right-back berth.

Harrow went close to levelling soon after the restart as Cassell juggled and then lost a ball but Cole-Parkes was there to clear his lines, and that was the nearest the visitors got as the Woods went on to hold on to their lead comfortably.

Borough's defence was equally solid and Walker was restricted in his efforts to score, failing to hit the target for once.

It will be interesting to see how tactics are changed for Monday's return match.

Report: ALAN EVANS