Revenge at Crawley

Having lost our final match of last season away to Crawley the Redsox were keen to put things right in their first match of this season. With the skipper arriving late, Redsox missing a hatful of chances, going 0-1 down in the first ten minutes and playing on a very difficult sandy pitch it looked as if we might struggle again.

However, the Redsox engine soon began to fire up as we started playing the ball faster and earlier to dominate possession & restrict Crawley to breakaway attacks and long through balls. Goals finally came with a clean strike from Hoops after a short corner slipped pass from Immy to level the game followed by a well worked move finished by Mike Sartorius passing the ball into goal for our second before half time.

In the second half we played even better and two more goals: one a superb solo run and angled finish by Immy and the other a more conventional Redsox finish at the far post finish by Micky put us comfortably in control. With a squad of 14 we were able to rotate players regularly to ensure we kept good mobility throughout the match especially as Crawley tired in the second half (albeit we did allow them to score a late second goal against the run of play).

It was good to see our debut Redsox players performing well, so a warm welcome to Brad, Chris CK, Terry P and Ben M. Other than three green cards for too much “chat” (two for Redsox players, who will remain nameless in the match report, and one for Crawley) the highlights were Martin punting a ball into Laurie’s nuts in our circle to give away a needless short corner and Immy’s clear enjoyment in teasing some former East Grinstead team mates, now playing for Crawley, with his dribbling past as many defenders as possible whenever he could.

Despite a disappointing make-your-own-white-bread-sandwich the post-match session in the bar was excellent with a disconcertingly growing number of red-wine drinkers enjoying the sight of a pathetically small final jug of beer as per attached photo. Clearly small beer for some!

Next week a good number of Redsox will be needed to play for SV so we will try to get squad lists out as early as we can and as we have discussed we all need to be flexible in playing for more than one team this year.

Well done Redsox - a very satisfactory start to the 2017/18 campaign.

Micky Denehy