Luton Town 0 Stevenage Borough 0

HALF TIME REPORT

Though the score at the break rightly remained untouched it was the Hertfordshire team who had the better of the half.

Luton only managed one effort on goal and were lucky to survive a concrete penalty shout when Ed Asafu-Adjaye appeared to bring down Mitchell Cole six minutes from the interval.

Luton made three changes to the side that dramatically beat Cambridge United at the weekend. Ed Asafu-Adjaye was handed his first start of the season after a long injury lay-off, while captain Kevin Nicholls returned after serving a three match ban and striker Tom Craddock was reinstalled to the starting line up after being dropped at the Abbey Stadium.

Luton boss Mick Harford had brought his seventh forward to the club earlier in the day in Peterborough United loanee Ben Wright, but with fellow Posh player Liam Hatch suspended after his red card against the U’s the manager chose the unusual step of putting Asa Hall in attack.

It proved to be pointless as Town struggled to get out of their own half for 25 minutes. Time and again the ball was hoofed up-field to Craddock, who was beaten in the air by Boro’s defensive pairing of Mark Roberts and Michael Bostwick.

The experiment lasted on 20 minutes as Hall dropped back into a five-man midfield to stop to wave after wave of, albeit, toothless Stevenage attacks.

It was Hall however who registered Town’s first effort on goal just after the half hour mark when Adam Newton took a break from being Mr Invisible on the right to burst into the box and find the midfielder with a reverse pass. Ironically, despite all the furore over diving of late, had Hall been a striker Luton could have had a shout at a penalty as he nicked the ball from keeper Chris Day but chose to stay on his feet, swivel and fire at the goalie.

Town could breate a sigh of relief on 39 minutes that the referee waved away Asafu-Adjaye's foul and hearts were again in mouths four minutes later when Nicholls lashed out at Darren Murphy and was fortunate not to see red on his return from suspension.