Martin reflects on abandoned match

Romford manager Paul Martin admitted to a great sense of relief after seeing his side’s Ryman One North match at Brightlingsea Regent abandoned last night.

Boro were trailing 2-0 after 52 minutes when floodlight failure at North Road left referee Steven Parmenter with no option but to call the match off.

And Martin said: “If the result was the other way around I’d be doing my nut a little bit.

“But at the end of the day I think it’s a little bit of my granddad looking down and doing me a favour because that would’ve been three defeats on the spin in the league.”

Both sides went into the match on the back of FA Cup wins at the weekend, but Boro conceded twice in three minutes midway through the first half, as Ben Newson’s brace put the hosts on top.

Martin added: “I thought both teams were playing really well. It was an attacking game, both teams were leaving themselves wide open but we’re playing football in the wrong areas, which I told them not to do on a bobbly pitch.

“Dicko (Jamie Dicks) has done brilliant to stop the ball going in for a cross, stopped it brilliantly going for a corner and lays it to Abs (Seymour), who gives it to my right back (Paul Preston), who sets it to my left back on his right foot!

“It’s a schoolboy error. He (Newson) took it well, but we should’ve defended it better. We dropped our shoulders, we were a little bit sluggish.”

Boro had fallen to 2-1 defeats at Waltham Abbey and Maldon, after conceding late goals on both occasions, and Martin knows his players have to start doing better on the road.

He added: ““We struggle travelling away from home long distances midweek, but we’ve got away with it.

“We were doing alright, we had some good chances, A good diving header cleared off the line, four, five, six corners, a good scramble in there. But they’re a new team in this league and they’re trying to defend, keep their bodies back behind the ball and catch teams on the counter-attack.

“We’ve come into this game blind, they’ve watched us Saturday so they got a little bit of an advantage on me.

“I’ve had 50 minutes of looking at them (Brightlingsea) now and hopefully I can get my tactics right against them next time we come down.

“Hopefully I can repay the favour and come back down here and take three points off them.”