Disappointing Dockers fail to fly

Crawley Down Gatwick 2 Newhaven FC 1, SCFL Premier Division match #2

After mid-week’s FA Cup heroics, it was back to league action for Newhaven today, and a tricky-looking trip to Crawley Down.

The hosts have started the season well, winning their opening league match comfortably before following it up with a hard-fought victory over Crowborough in the FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round.

With the Dockers having lost their opening league encounter in a lacklustre defeat to Steyning, it was hoped that the momentum gained from Wednesday night would help carry Newhaven over the line in what was always likely to be a close encounter.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.

Whether it was the blistering hot weather or the absence of two of Wednesday night’s key men – Lee Robinson and Tom Underwood – the Dockers failed to reach the attacking splendour of a few days earlier.

Not that they played particularly badly here. They didn’t. Not really.

This was no Steyning performance where they should have been out of the game by half-time.

Newhaven without doubt enjoyed more of the ball in the first-half, putting together some decent passages of play. However, all too often, their moves lost momentum in the final-third before breaking down.

Lukas Franzen-Jones and Alfie Rogers fashioned a few half-chances for themselves, albeit nothing that you could call particularly clear-cut. Franzen-Jones came closest to scoring when his bundled effort was hacked off the line.

At the other end, Crawley Down appeared more than happy to play on the break, but despite getting into a few dangerous positions they didn’t really cause Dockers custodian Jake Buss too many issues either.

In fact, it was hard to recall either goalkeeper making a save of note in a not particularly eventful first-half.

The blistering summer sunshine arguably isn’t particularly conducive to producing fast-flowing, end-to-end, entertaining football matches.

One of the main talking points of the opening 45-minutes was the performance of the referee (it was also to be one of the main talking points by the end of the game, too). There were some strange decisions to say the least. For both teams. It wasn’t always clear quite why a decision had been awarded. Or even what it was for.

Now, I’m not here to do a hatchet job on the referee. Any referees, in fact. It’s a horrible job. One you couldn’t pay me enough money to do. Reffing my son’s kids’ games on a Sunday morning is bad enough. Without the ref, there’s no game. I understand that. 100%.

However, it’s hard – no, impossible – to write a report of this game without making mention of the man in the middle. 

It’s fair to say, he wasn’t great. Arguably not helped by the fact that he seemed tethered to the centre circle for most of the match. Honestly, I think my heat map for the 90 minutes would show more movement than his did! And I was sat in the stands!

Yes, I know moaning about the ref always makes a team’s fanbase look bitter. So let me perfectly clear here. Newhaven did not do enough to win the game. There can be few complaints about the outcome of the match. They simply weren’t good enough on the day.

What they can be annoyed about, though, is that a host of key decisions certainly seemed to go against them. Especially ones that mattered.

Anyway, we’ll get to that in due course.

Newhaven started the second-half a little more on the front-foot and had the hosts largely pinned back for the opening 10 minutes or so of the half. Still without ever looking all that threatening.

That said, they did come close to scoring just before the hour mark when a Charlie Bennett (I think) header crashed off the bottom of the bar and somehow stayed out.

Then came the first of the afternoon's really frustrating refereeing decisions which saw Franzen-Jones sin-binned for dissent.

Now, again to be clear, if he swore at the ref, then there’s no excuse for that and the sin-bin is fully justified.

However, it was the build-up to the decision that was controversial. The Docker’s striker was clearly – and I mean clearly – pushed in the centre circle. As he fell to the ground, he grabbed the ball ready to take a quick free-kick, only for the free-kick to bafflingly be awarded to Crawley Down for deliberate handball. To compound matters, Franzen-Jones was then booked. Play to the whistle, I guess is the morale to the story.

As I’ve already written, there’s no excuse for the subsequent dissent (if it was there). None at all. The problem, though, is that the sin bin rule is used so inconsistently by refs. What some let go, others punish. The fact that I’ve only seen about ten sin bins since the rule came into place at the start of last season shows that it’s a hugely problematic rule. I’ve certainly seen far, far more than 10 clear examples of dissent in this period. I see that in most games, in fact!

In fairness, the temporary loss of a player didn’t really alter the flow of the game. Crawley Down still seemed content to let the Dockers have the ball and try to hit them on the counter.

It was actually Newhaven who came closest to scoring in this period. Max Vardy cutting inside and seeing his effort fly just high of the crossbar.

Alfie Rogers was then brought down just outside the area, only to be booked for simulation, despite at least three different defenders seeming to have made varying degrees of contact with him

Then, just as Franzen-Jones was beckoned back onto the pitch, came another iffy decision. A long-ball forward saw a Crawley Down striker chase the loose ball, only to collide with Buss in mid-air, leaving the latter sprawled on the floor in obvious pain. Usually, any contact on the goalkeeper sees the attacking team penalised. Not on this occasion, though.

Crawley Down were awarded a free-kick for what was a 50-50 collision, Buss was booked (I felt sure he was going to be sent off as, having been deemed to have committed the foul, he was surely the last man) and there was an air of inevitability about what was going to happen next.

Sure enough, Michael Belli’s low free-kick evaded the grasp of the diving Buss, and found the back of the net with just over 15 minutes left.

Disappointingly, there was no real response from the Dockers. In fact, Crawley Down took control of the game from this point. 

When Harvey Enticknap danced around some half-hearted challenges before slamming the ball past Buss for the second, Newhaven could have few complaints. It had been coming.

With time all but up, Newhaven were offered the chance of a consolation when they were awarded a penalty deep into stoppage time. In the interest of fairness and balance, it was never a penalty. Not one Dockers player (or supporter) even appealed for it! Even now, I'm not really sure what it was for.

Franzen-Jones placed his penalty right down the middle to reduce the deficit, and maintain his record of having scored in every game so far this season.

Before the game could restart, though, the ref blew the final whistle to maintain Crawley Down’s 100 per cent start to the season.

So it was another disappointing afternoon for the Dockers. Two league games and zero points is certainly not the start to the season they had in mind.

Thankfully, though, there’s only a few days before they get a chance to put things right and get some points on the board, with a visit to AFC Uckfield on Tuesday night.

Fingers-crossed it can be as emphatic as last week’s mid-week game. Failing that, I’d settle for a scrappy 1-0 win!

My MOM (aka, the controversial part): Marcin Ruda. The midfielder is getting better with every game. A bundle of energy with a great range of passing and ball retention skills. He certainly didn’t deserve to be on the losing side today.

As some of you will know, it has become tradition for my son to interview players and managers after the game. However, fearing that a certain man in black’s performance would have been hard to ignore, and not wanting to get anyone in trouble for speaking out of turn, we decided to forego that just for this week. Hopefully normal service will be resumed on Tuesday!