Dockers enjoy rare comfortable afternoon at Fort Road

Newhaven 4 Loxwood 0, SCFL Premier Division match #17

While most games across Sussex fell foul to the wind and rain yesterday afternoon, Fort Road’s artificial surface meant that Newhaven’s match against Loxwood was not one of them.

Of course, whether this would actually prove to be a blessing or not, only time would tell.

On paper, this looked to be a good time to playing Loxwood. After a bright start to the season, the Magpies have struggled in recent weeks after some off-field issues, and they went into this match on the back of a crushing 8-1 defeat against Roffey.

However, Dockers fans have been here before in recent months, most notably against Little Common and Shoreham who were both on dismal runs before claiming three-points against us.

After 25-minutes of yesterday’s match, a repeat of such an outcome never looked likely.

Newhaven took the lead with just two-minutes on the clock. Callum Edwards was tripped in the area and from the spot Lee Robinson made no mistake, smashing the ball into the top corner. It’s doubtful whether two goalkeepers would have saved it.

The second arrived just 15 minutes later. By that point the Dockers could have already been two or three up. The Loxwood keeper made two good saves to deny first Johnson Adesanya and then Jake Robinson, before Luke Donaldson’s instinctive backheel was scrambled off the line.

It was Lee Robinson who eventually grabbed the second after being superbly slipped through by brother Jake, and applying a cool finish off the far post.

Just four minutes later, Lee turned provider when he received the ball from a short corner and crossed for centre back Regan Clarke-Salter to cleverly flick home his first goal for the Dockers.

3-0 up with just 22 minutes on the clock. Positive signs.

Of course, earlier in the season we’d been in a similar position against Saltdean, only to allow the opposition back into the game and end up having to cling on for a nervy victory.

Loxwood created their only real moment of danger in the opening 45-minutes just a few minutes after Newhaven had grabbed their third. Thankfully, the increasingly confident looking Johnny Barnes-Galloway made a good save to keep his clean sheet intact.

The Dockers reached half-time with a minimum of fuss, though, and were by far and away the team looking more likely to score the next goal.

If anything, the second-half was far more one-sided than the first and had Newhaven’s players had their shooting boots on, then the final result could have resembled a cricket score.

By the time Adesanya grabbed Newhaven’s fourth in the 53^rd minute, the Loxwood keeper had already been busy, keeping out Edwards and Lee.

The fourth goal was, without doubt, the pick of the bunch. Jake Robinson did brilliantly to control a looping ball, before teeing up Adesanya who cut inside and fired the ball into the roof of the net.

What followed was a procession of chances (and misses) with a few players looking like they were competing for miss of the season (we surely have a winner for that particular competition – sorry Cal.)

Even being reduced to ten men for ten minutes when Bailie Rogers received a sin-bin for over-protesting what looked like a stonewall penalty being denied, didn’t alter the flow of the game.

Lee Robinson missed a couple (well, maybe more than a couple) more than presentable opportunities to wrap up his hat-trick, before Edwards somehow failed to put the ball over the line from very close-range. Even now I can’t quite work out how he didn’t score.

Fortunately, it was one of those days where the misses didn’t overly matter. The game had been won in its first quarter and, although Loxwood battled right until the end, there was never any real danger that the Dockers would let the lead they had built up slip on this occasion.

So that’s three wins on the bounce for the Dockers. Hopefully a sign that the season’s early struggles are starting to turn a corner. There’s still work to be done; we still don’t look quite as fluent as we have done over previous seasons, but there are definitely promising signs that things are once again heading in the right direction.

We now enter a run of away games, not returning to Fort Road until Boxing Day when local rivals Peacehaven are our visitors.

In the meantime, we face trips to Wick (30^th November), Horsham YMCA (7^th December), Bexhill United (14^th December) and Saltdean (21^st December).

Let’s hope we can keep the good run going. It would be great to see you at as many of the games as possible.

Come On You Dockers!

My man of the match (aka, the controversial part): Regan Clarke-Salter. The young defender is improving with every game and looked solid throughout yesterday, marking a fine performance with his first goal; a goal he seemed to very much enjoy.