deflected home

Hi,
Am I right that in " … and he doubled Cardiff’s advantage by deflected home Whittingham’s free-kick on 20 minutes.” it would be better with either ‘by deflecting home’ or ‘as he deflected home’? And the original should be ‘the deflected home…’?

That would, at least, make it reasonably correct. I also think ‘home’ should be either omitted or be written as ‘home team Whittingham’s…’

–Hmm… Doesn’t ‘home team Whittingham’s…’ change the meaning of it?
To just picture it: Whittingham (a Cardiff’s player) takes a free-kick and it goes in through deflection of that poor fellow, defender.
To me, “deflected-home-Whittingham’s-free-kick” itself looked suspicious in terms of wording. (?)

I cannot make the original wording make sense. What is the purpose of ‘home’ in the original sentence?
I don’t see how ‘deflected’ can possibly be correct. Regardless of what ‘home’ means, I still think ‘deflecting’ is what is needed.

That was how it read in a report: “Duffy (14’ minutes og, 20’ minutes og) Declan John’s 14th-minute shot hit a post and went in off Duffy, before the Republic of Ireland defender headed home Peter Whittingham’s free-kick. That was his third own goal of the season,…”
You can also come across “he smashed home the Tranmere winner”; “he volleyed home the only goal of the game …”; “Bunney’s header was saved and Lund stabbed home from the rebound” etc., all of them meaning ‘to net’.

That’s what I was looking for. ‘Deflected’ definitely sounds odd.
Thank you.