As the manager of the team leading the Blue Square Premier, you prepare for a visit to a side just outside the playoffs, especially when you’ve just lost at home to your nearest challengers for the title, hoping that your players will give everything and you get a little bit of luck in the 90-odd minutes.

With 12 minutes gone, Stevenage boss Graham Westley must have thought that all his birthdays had come at once. His side had started the game strongly, the Dons looked ponderous and unsure of themselves, and two controversial decisions had handed his team what turned out to be an unassailable lead. The opening period of the game would have made even the most self-effacing of managers look pleased with themselves.

From the kick-off, Boro showed a sense of urgency thatAFC W imbledon failed to match, despite the weekend’s results all going in the Dons’ favour and leaving them seven points off the playoffs with six games to play. Tim Sills rolled the ball to Chris Beardsley, who stopped it before racing away from the centre circle, leaving Michael Bostwick with a clear run at the Dons defence - the most inventive kick-off routine of the season bar none. The attack came to nothing, but Boro were first to every loose ball, and when the Dons did gain possession, centre-halves Mark Roberts and Jon Ashton had the easiest of tasks as Steven Gregory and Sam Hatton’s passes in the direction of the often-isolated Danny Kedwell fell short of their target.

With nine minutes gone, Stevenage took the lead. From a left-wing corner, Beardsley’s off-target header was kept in at the far post, and Roberts nipped in between Paul Lorraine and Brett Johnson to divert the ball past Seb Brown with his forearm. It wasn’t quite as obvious as Tom Jordan’s impression of Kobe Bryant at Eastleigh last season, but it was as clear a handball as Federico Macheda’s at Old Trafford two days earlier. And that was given, too.

The Dons were fuming, but three minutes later they were apoplectic. Jon Byrom and Lawrie Wilson combined well on the right, and from Byrom’s lobbed pass over Jay Conroy, Wilson hammered a spectacular first-time volley past Brown for a goal worthy of a much higher level of football. Had Wilson not been two yards offside as Byrom played him in, it would have been a less bitter pill to swallow, but despite Wimbledon’s protestations the goal stood. The game was as good as over with most of it still to play.

The Dons couldn’t make any headway, despite manufacturing some promising situations, and it took a superb point-blank save from Brown to prevent Sills from making it three when he was allowed to waltz through a static defence. With 25 minutes on the clock the Dons mounted their best attack of the half, Will Hendry’s clever volley finding Kedwell in space 20 yards from goal, but as the 24-goal striker controlled the ball on his chest Ashton brought him crashing to the ground with a clumsy challenge in the D. Referee Lewis deemed the foul not even worthy of a yellow card, though a clear goalscoring opportunity had been denied by the last man back. The free-kick came to nothing, and Wimbledon’s comeback looked like fizzling out before it had really begun. Sills and the combative Beardsley tested Brown further before the half finished.

At half-time Terry Brown replaced Will Hendry with Nathan Elder, sensing that a physical presence was what the Dons were lacking after being outmuscled by their Hertfordshire opponents throughout most of the first half. The change saw Brett Johnson play a series of high balls up to the front two, rather than continuing with the first half’s more aesthetically pleasing but largely ineffective ploy of feeding Jay Conroy and Danny Blanchett in wide positions. However, with Ashton and Roberts in imperious form, the Dons’ new attacking threat was never fully exploited, especially with Luke Moore and Ricky Wellard so quiet. Wellard was the first to test Chris Day in the Stevenage goal, but his free-kick on the hour hardly troubled the former Crystal Palace keeper, and neither did tame efforts by Elder and fellow sub Glenn Poole, who had replaced Moore just after the hour.

Stevenage, sensing that the Dons were at last beginning to look threatening, began to employ time-wasting tactics. Time and again they took an age to take free-kicks, goal-kicks and throw-ins, but the referee made no effort to hurry them up - as Luton boss Richard Money had found to his irritation at the Lamex on Saturday. The crowd could have been forgiven for imagining that Mr Lewis was being influenced by Westley, who was perplexingly on first-name terms with all the officials, and for identifying this as the reason why the referee failed to deal with any of the Boro bench’s constant chiding. Terry Brown, on the other hand, received a stern ticking-off from Mr Lewis when he applauded the award of a free-kick against Sills for backing in.

As the game wore on and the Dons attacks continued to come to nothing, at least the refereeing started to even itself out. Beardsley was finally booked for his ninth foul, and Drury was cautioned for kicking the ball away after he’d been caught offside. Two Stevenage bookings in quick succession, when similar action in the first half may have put the game on a slightly different course. Five minutes from the end, Bostwick’s competitiveness got the better of him and he was yellow-carded for a trip.

By now it was too late, and despite a late flurry from the Dons that saw Kedwell have a shot charged down, and Conroy and Blanchett whip a couple of dangerous crosses into the box, Stevenage had all three points in the bag - a bag which then had a pretty ribbon tied on it in the first minute of added time by Brett Johnson. The defender had arguably been the Dons’ best player on the day, but he needlessly tried to beat Beardsley on the edge of his own box, succeeding only in prodding the ball to Bostwick, whose cross to the far post was controlled and despatched past Brown by sub Eddie Odhiambo.

If Dean Saunders was allowed to say that his Wrexham side were unlucky to come away from Kingsmeadow with just a point, then Terry Brown was quite within his rights to bemoan the Dons’ luck on Easter Monday. But three home defeats in 13 days pretty much put paid to his side’s playoff hopes this season.