Hatters delight as first half scoring hoodoo is over

Prior to the victory, Luton hadn’t scored during the opening half in the first eight games of the season, but that all changed once Benson rose to nod home Lawless’ delivery on 30 minutes.

Lawless said: “I didn’t particularly realise that myself that we hadn’t scored in the first half.

“Maybe it’s a dressing room cliché that you want to get the first goal, so everyone knows how important it is to get that first goal.

“I think we had come out, started well and it was important for us to get a goal when we were doing well.”

Within moments of Benson scoring, Luke Guttridge had added a second with a deflected shot from range as Benson continued: “It was nice to get an early goal.

“These sort of sides (Dartford), the longer the game goes on without a goal, the more confidence they get, the more they’ve got to play for.

“If you can get an early goal, get one up and then luckily we got another one straight after, that killed their momentum.

“It’s important in any game that you get the first goal and more so here against a team who, no disrespect to Dartford, will come here and just look to try and frustrate you and get fans on your back.

“An early goal makes it tougher for them, as they’ve got to come out a bit more and do a bit more to get a result. It opens it up for us, so more of the same for Saturday.”

Town were almost off the mark when Benson had a goal chalked off on nine minutes and once that had happened, boss John Still was confident they were going to be all right.

He said: “When that went in, I actually said to myself, we’re going to score.

“The movement was good, it was a matter of finding the right execution and we did, as Paul left the back stick and touched it in.

“We got a deflected goal which was unfortunate for them, but not unwarranted.

“There was some desperate defending at times for them before Alex Lawless (scored), so I was really, really pleased.”

Town also finally scored three goals from open play, to break their unwanted record of just one in 12 hours of football beforehand.

Lawless added: “It’s good for the facts and the stats. We’re working on as many areas as we can and if there are any things that are on our back, it’s nice to get out of the way and not have any mental blockages of anything so we kick on now.”

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