Martin: We deserved three points

Romford boss Paul Martin was pleased to see his side bounce back from opening-day defeat at Harlow to beat Redbridge in midweek.

Kurt Smith’s goal was enough for a 1-0 win at Mill Field and Martin said: “If you score goals, you can win games. We lost 1-0 on Saturday, but won 1-0 on Tuesday.

“The first half at Harlow was not what I expected. We were too laid back and gave them too much respect.

“We couldn’t string five-yard passes together but in the second half we probably deserved a point. We created chances but couldn’t put the ball in the back of the net and at the end of the day, they got the goal.

“We had the same formation (on Tuesday), a couple of changes in personnel, and I think we deserved the three points.

“It was a good goal from Kurt. You never know with him and his left peg, but it was quite a comfortable finish, and it was good to have Abs (Seymour) back to tighten things up.

“We gave a couple of young lads a start, Joe Oates and Jahmel Heywoord, and no-one let us down.

“We defended tremendously, weathered storms here and there and created good chances ourselves. We hit the bar and had a good shout for a penalty late on. We had better and more chances and fair play to us.”

Romford were playing a behind-closed-doors friendly against East Thurrock last night (Thursday) in a bid to give players some game time, should they be needed for serious action.

And with a rash of early bookings already piling up that might be any time soon.

Martin added: “The refs are jumping on the yellow cards a bit. I think we’ve had eight in two games and there hasn’t been a bad tackle.

“It stops the game and it’s killing football. They want a Respect campaign, but they ignore us and then wonder why we end up shouting at them!

“They’re all learning, like us, but you wish they would let it flow a bit. They can’t have day jobs if they’ve got all that paperwork to do and it costs us money too. That was the gate money gone the other night!”