Men's 1s vs Lewes 3

Today Hailsham 1s had an away day against Lewes 3s at Southdown Sports Club. Attentive readers may note that this was supposed to be a slip week with no game and a nice opportunity for the multitude of broken Hailsham players to have a bit of rest and recuperation allowing them to focus on a tough fixture at the pub. Alas, the Lewes team would have been too busy setting fire to things the following week so the game had to be brought forward a week.

The change of date caused issues with a few of the regular 1s players (to be fair to them it was supposed to be a week off). This resulted in a changed squad from previous weeks and allowed team captain Ryan Moore to hand a couple of first team debuts to Chris Jones and Jordan Tapp. This was supplemented by juicy fresh call ups for Aiden Miller, Finley Jones, Connor Agnew and John Bartlett.

Hailsham started strong from the start with their right midfielder setting the tone by putting in a sliding tackle on the Lewes left back as he was closing down; some would say that the afformented right midfielder “stacked it”, “fell over” and “never got near ball or player” but this match report writer would say that was the very moment that put the initial spark of fear and doubt into the minds of the Lewes team.

The first part of the game started with a midfield battle with neither team being able to take full control of the game. Passes from both sides were leaving a lot for both sets of forwards to do. On the Hailsham side of things it was the superman, the mythical, the legendary Joshua Smith-Jones who was powering the team forward. His brilliant hold up play and general nuisance making would eventually go on as a major contributing factor to win him the Hailsham team’s man of the match vote.

The second of the right winger’s interesting moments came as he picked up the ball on the halfway line, beat a couple of men round the outside and suddenly realised as he was speeding down the baseline that a head-on collision with a keeper wearing full kit would not be the most comfortable. He tried to stop but the pitch was quite slippy so it happened anyway.

The Lewes team got the first goal of the game after about 10 to 15 minutes with a solid reverse strike from their left side of the circle which found its way inside the right post. This set the status quo of the game, which continued to be dominated by brilliant defensive play and gritty battles in midfield. At this point, honourable mentions should go to Aidan Miller for his work in defence (and remembering his shinpads) and Stuart Baldwin for his work rate and drives forward from the middle of the pitch; both of whom were serious contenders for man of the match themselves.

The second half started with the Lewes team pressing the Hailsham defence hard. So much so that the backline started to look a bit like NASA’s Cape Canaveral as aerial balls were launched upwards with a frequency that would make Elon Musk feel giddy.

It was somewhere around this point in the game (50 minutes) that Hailsham’s right midfielder decided the game needed a bit of contemporary dance. This involved a bit of good tackling, a bit of balancing on top of a hockey ball, a bit of football and a lot of falling on the floor.

15 minutes before the end, the Hailsham team started to win short corners. One of these went to the top of the circle before being slipped to Stuart Baldwin who put in a teasing ball goal-wards, Hailsham’s right midfielder jumped on the opportunity, running in to finesse the ball around the keeper.

Josh Headey then injects for another short corner for Bailey Freeland-Jones to stop before Josh Smith-Jones expertly drag pushed the ball into the goal. The news out the dressing room suggests there is currently an argument whether injections count as assists or not.

Hailsham win a final short corner, only to hear the whistle blow immediately after. This time, the ball goes directly to Josh Smith-Jones who put a comet of a ball towards the back postal area. Luckily, Hailsham’s rapid right midfielder was there to guide the ball high up into the side netting of the goal.

Hailsham 3, Lewes 1.