Dartford 0 Harrow Borough 1

A PATCHED-UP Harrow side inflicted Dartford's first home league defeat since November thanks to Dean Fenton's poachers' strike.

Borough travelled to Princes Park last Saturday minus injured sextet Wayne Walters, Danny Leech, Daniel McGonigle,Jamie Lawrence,Bobby Highton and Miles Jones, while on-loan midfielder Dorian Smith was serving a one-match suspension.

However, those who came into the fold, including centre-back Simon Dahl and a untested central midfield duo of James Fraser and Kwasi Frempong, did Borough boss David Howell proud, plundering three crucial points in front of a 1,000-strong crowd.

"We had to really focus on the job in hand and my players did that ever so well," said Howell. "We knew they would be quite a direct, physical side and we had to counter that. But it was a result we deserved as we performed really well.

"It was probably our best 90-minute performance for some time. We usually have a bad 45 minutes and a good 45, yet we did well for the whole game and gave our supporters something to cheer about.

"There we are with eight players out, the goalkeeper was the captain, young Simon at centre-back, two midfield players who had not played together at this level before, and everyone turned up on the day."

Harrow certainly started brightly, with Fraser going close,while skip-per-for-the-day Baptiste was called into action to deny Noble.

Gary Noel then jinked his way past three Dartford players but pulled his shot beyond the near post. Lee Hall then had a free-kick turned around by Darts stopper Young before his opposite number Baptiste was again forced into action to frustrate the lively Noble.

Harrow made the breakthrough in the 36th minute.Ryan Watts found Clarke,who beat Coyle on the left before driving a low cross into the six-yard box, where Fenton nipped in ahead of Young to stab the ball home.

Jonathan Constant became more of a threat for the visitors in the second half and that flustered the Darts, who were fortunate not to fall further behind when Noel's goal-bound shot was hacked off the line by Guest.

The hosts then turned to their significant height advantage in a bid to salvage something from the game,yet their lofted balls into the danger area were snaffled up by a confident Baptiste,who clearly revelled in the added responsibility of being captain.

Harrow Borough: Baptiste,Hall, Watts, Dahl, Jinadu, Frempong, Fenton (Hunte,71), Fraser,Clarke (Morlese,90), Noel, Constant.