This game could barely have had a more daunting start for Ware after Max Woodford, making his debut in goal, was sent off with just five minutes on the clock. A long ball through had Lenny Asamoah outpacing the Ware defence as he bore down on goal with just the keeper to beat. A moment’s hesitation by Woodford left him no time to deal with the ball and instead he clattered the Hadley man to the ground.
It had to be a red card and in no time Ware were preparing centre back Lewis Thomas to come on as a stand-in custodian. Ironically it was Thomas who came on in last season’s league match with Hadley when keeper Fred Burbidge didn’t appear for the second half due to medical concerns. Back then Ware still had eleven men on the pitch but this time someone had to make way for Thomas and the unlucky man was Rechan Esprit.
The fates weren’t with Thomas in that game and even less so in this. He made a couple of comfortable stops before Romey Meoded fired in a long range shot from wide on the right. It would have tested any keeper and Thomas could do little more than watch it fly into the top corner of his net. It looked like being a long, hard day for Ware.
In fact, they seemed to be managing the situation quite well. Of course, any foray towards Thomas’s goal was bound to set the nerves tingling but one way or another he and his defenders coped. As a result Ware came into the game and seemed to be having a fair share of the action. Once again Sami Moutawafiq was playing a leading role.
With half time looming Sam Mayuma cut in to the Hadley area and saw his pass into the middle interrupted by an elbow. Theo Ofori converted the penalty for what would have been a comfortable looking score at the break and not entirely undeserved.
Yet, within a minute a Hadley attack saw Asamoah sandwiched between two defenders in the area and Luke Alfano restored his team’s lead with the last kick of the half.
The ten men never got close to saving the game after that. They looked tired in the second half and much of the game was in or around the Ware area. Moutawafiq came closest to scoring when his free kick on the right cracked against Charles Taylor’s right hand post but there was little else to raise home supporters hopes.
By then however Ware were two down, Finley Aldridge benefitting from a ball that cut through the Ware defence before he hit it past an exposed Thomas. Ware looked capable of keeping the loss to respectable proportions but Tommy Roberts with six minutes to go and Peter Rosemin in added time with the third penalty of the game denied them an honourable defeat.
It was Ware’s worst home loss since February 2020 when they went down by the same score to Stevenage. There is a temptation to blame this latest set back on playing nearly a whole game with a man short. That, along with Meoded’s goal out of the blue, must have had some impact. But whilst Mayuma and Moutawafiq kept plugging away there was a sense of things falling apart in the second half.
It’s not clear what Reece Beckles-Richards, also making his debut, made of all this. He’s probably seen it all before somewhere in his career. Meanwhile Jack Grosvenor will be free of work commitments next week and David Sota is getting closer to fitness but, with Alfie Mumford having transferred to Daventry, Blues now have to find a keeper for their next game at Milton Keynes Irish.
Teams and crime sheet.
Ware: Max Woodford, George Alfieri, Josip Jevdic, Sami Moutawafiq, Josh Okotcha (Caiden Remy-Dee 79mins), Jay Rolfe, Theo Ofori, Max Granville (Herbie Townsend 56mins), Reece Beckles-Richards (Gabriel Chapps 71mins), Rechan Esprit (Lewis Thomas 7mins), Sam Mayuma. Unused subs: Mitch Hahn.
Red card: Max Woodford 5 minutes. Yellow card: Herbie Townsend 76 minutes.
Hadley: Charles Taylor, Hedley Ogbebor (Prince Kandolo 46mins), Callum Ismail, Billy Hayes, Luke Massingham, Peter Rosemin, Lenny Asamoah (Tommy Roberts 54mins), Romey Meoded (Cameron Ferguson 65mins), Finley Aldridge (Alvin Kyremeh 84mins), Cheik Hamed Zidouemba (Antonio Paone-Michael 36mins), Luke Alfano.
Yellow cards: Hedley Ogbebor (first half), Lenny Asamoah 44 minutes, Callum Ismail 49 minutes, Tommy Roberts 63 minutes, Cameron Ferguson 86 minutes.
