Crowborough Athletic match report

On Monday morning, the Lingers travelled to Crowborough to take on the early pace setters at the top of the tree. This was a quick turnaround with less than 48 hours since the FA Vase victory and with that, a few absentees from Saturday’s squad – Hodge & Stripp dropped out with Wetton & Brown stepping in.

The game started quickly with half chances at both ends, a few ambitious efforts from the hosts were followed up with some set-pieces from Lingers with the best chance falling to Wetton who fired over from 12 yards on the volley. Crows took the lead on the half hour mark, the referee played advantage and when nothing came of it pulled it back to the previous phase of play for a free kick… this was whipped in and Elliott Duncan was on hand to bundle it home.

From the goal until half-time, the game was disrupted by a mixture of playacting, referee manipulation and yellow cards. 3 of them came the way of Lingfield and 2 of them for Crowborough, unfortunately for the home side their 2 were for the same player. Harrison Mayhew was first booked for pretending he was head-butted which to the shame of Sean Muggeridge (Crowborough manager), who said he would speak with him at half time. That word may have become slightly more firm as only 14 minutes later, Mayhew was showing his second yellow for pulling back Dickinson… 1-0 HT home side down to 10.

The second half onslaught from Lingers never really materialised, Crows were set up well and dangerous on the counter attack. It took just 16 minutes for the referee to even up the numbers, Magala-Bryan picked up his second yellow as he delayed his clearance and got caught, it was the correct decision. Crows saw out the game well and the stop-start nature of the game, including a sin-bin for Richardson, ruined the spectacle somewhat for what promised to be a great game inside the first half an hour.

Good luck to Crowborough on their push for promotion, they seemed to have the set-up and more than enough volunteers and supporters to succeed at Step 4!