#COYD - Come on You Dockers

Peacehaven 2 Newhaven 0, SCFL Premier Division match #37 It was always likely to be highly unlikely… and so it proved. After a stunning run of nine wins in a row had offered the Dockers an outside chance of claiming the most unexpected of play-off places, Easter Monday’s defeat at local rivals Peacehaven ended any such hopes for good. Ultimately, even a win wouldn’t have made much difference. With Crawley Down and Petersfield also both claiming three-points yesterday, we wouldn’t have made it to the promised land regardless. But let’s not have it wrong. Defeat to Peacehaven still stings; more so as it means that for the first time in quite a while it means the local rivals will finish ahead of us in the table, and also still have an outside chance of claiming a play-off spot too. In fairness, like ourselves, Peacehaven came into his game on a good run of form, having tasted defeat in the league just twice since the start of February – and those losses came against runaway leade...

Newhaven 3 Roffey 1, SCFL Premier Division match #36 Football. It’s a funny old game! Had you told anyone following our Boxing Day defeat against local rivals Peacehaven that there would be anything riding on the return fixture, then you would almost certainly have found yourself certified. Yet, here we are, just under four months on, with a match as potentially important as any Haven Derby in recent history. The winners will go into the last day of the season with at least a mathematical chance of still reaching the play-offs. For the losers, though, any such dreams can probably be extinguished. That the Dockers find themselves in such a position is thanks solely to a frankly astonishing run of nine-straight victories. A run that continued on Saturday with victory over another play-off chasing side, Roffey. At one point, Roffey had looked odds-on for a play-off spot. However, a downturn in form which had brought just one win in seven games prior to Saturday has seen their ...

Midhurst and Easebourne 1 Newhaven 2, SCFL Premier Division match #35 The third in a run of three lengthy away trips brought the Dockers yet another three points as their strong end to the season continues. While, on paper, a trip to Midhurst may have looked like a likely source of three points – the hosts have nothing to play for and were on a run of four straight defeats – their ground is one that we have typically struggled at in recent years. Sloped and bobbly, it’s far from the ideal outfield on which to witness flowing football. Yet, in patches, Newhaven produced some decent, intricate football on Saturday, especially in the midfield areas. Had the final pass at times been a little better/quicker, then the Dockers would surely have ended up finding this game far more comfortable than they ultimately did. The on-form Dockers signalled their intent from the outset, with Ryan Warwick’s attempt to lob the goalkeeper from long-range drifting just away from the target inside th...

Loxwood 1 Newhaven 4, SCFL Premier Division match #34 The Dockers made it a magnificent seven wins from seven games as three goals in the last twenty-five minutes saw off a hard-working Loxwood side. Battling against relegation, seven points from their last three games had given the Magpies a slight cushion from the drop zone. And it was clear to see from the outset that this was a much-improved Loxwood side from the one that had we had beaten comfortably at Fort Road earlier in the season. Thankfully, even with a host of absent players which saw a late call-up for under 18s goalkeeper Ashley Overton, this is a far more confident Newhaven team, too. That said, after a frankly unentertaining opening 20-minutes of the match (it was reminiscent of a pre-season match, being played in pre-season temperatures), the Dockers got the benefit of a decision that could easily have led to young centre-back Liam Osborne being given his marching orders. A long ball over the top led to the L...