Braintree Town and Halstead Town have set up a mouth-watering Essex Senior Cup quarter-final clash.

The two teams will collide at Cressing Road next week after both negotiated their way through tricky fourth-round matches last night.

Ridgeons League premier division Halstead beat Romford 4-2 at Rosemary Lane, while Braintree, of the Ryman League top-flight, eased past Chelmsford City 3-1.

Delighted Halstead boss Paul Grimsey said: "We couldn't have asked for a better tie at this stage.

"It's a local derby and it'll be nice to go and play on their quality pitch.

"We'll be the underdogs, so we'll have nothing to lose."

After surviving an early scare when Romford missed an open goal, Halstead took their Essex Senior League opponents to task last night.

They took the lead midway through the first half when, after Dave Walton made a great save for the hosts, Halstead broke with Luke Hammond setting up Simon Atangana to score.

Dave Barefield hit the bar before half-time, but after the interval Romford shocked the home side with two goals in seven minutes following mistakes by Walton and Paul Miles.

The visitors were lifted by this and Halstead had to defend doggedly, but they survived and regrouped to score three times in eight minutes.

The first came when Glen Revell rounded the Romford keeper following good work by Chris Dennett.

Halstead went into the lead when Jimmy Chatters crossed for Gareth Heath to fire home and they wrapped things up when Dennett laid the ball in for Barefield to score on his return from injury.

Braintree, meanwhile, overcame Chelmsford City again three weeks after their initial 3-0 victory over the Clarets was scrapped from the records.

Published Wednesday January 7, 2004

Brought to you by the Evening Gazette