Battling Dockers foiled at semi-final stage

Newhaven 0 Steyning 2, Peter Bentley Cup Semi-final, Tuesday March 31^st 2026

Tuesday night brought with it a trip to Shoreham for our re-arranged Peter Bentley Cup semi-final match against Steyning. A final against Little Common the spoils for the victors.

With the Barrowmen currently riding high at the top of the SCFL Premier Division and having already beaten us twice already this season (and one of those a rather hefty tonking that we don’t like to talk about), there could be little doubt that a win here would be one of our biggest results for quite a while.

However, entering the match on the back of a previously elusive two-game winning run, we were probably in a better position to be playing this match now than we would have been when it was originally postponed back in February.

We certainly started confidently enough, with Ryan Blunt registering the first shot of the match just a couple of minutes in, although it was always rising.

As expected, Steyning soon settled and began to knock the ball around with confidence; the Dockers sitting off and trying to make it as difficult as possible for the league leaders to play through them.

Steyning missed a couple of presentable opportunities, but the Dockers managed to make it through the opening 15-minutes unscathed.

Unfortunately, by the 20^th minute we were two down.

The one thing you can’t afford to do against a team as good as Steyning is make elementary mistakes at crucial times. That’s exactly what we did, with first Alex Brewer and then Marcus Allen taking full advantage of those errors to put Steyning in a commanding position.

At that point, I’m sure I wasn’t the only person of a Dockers persuasion to be having flashbacks to the aforementioned heavy defeat back in early February (the one we don't like to talk about) and starting to fear the worst.

To give our boys full credit, though, they stuck doggedly to their gameplan, and while Steyning continued to see plenty of the ball, clear openings were few and far between. Reaching half-time still only 2-0 behind meant we were still well and truly in the game.

In fact, had Ezra Roeg managed to get a little bit more purchase on an effort near the end of the first-half, we could have even gone into the break just a solitary goal behind.

If the first-half had been all about containing Steyning’s threat, then the second was all about the opposition stifling ours.

Newhaven flew out of the blocks, playing at a far higher tempo and starting to apply pressure to the Steyning backline in a way we hadn’t really attempted to do in the first.

Within five minutes of the restart, we’d had three sighters at goal. Shay Tobin headed over, Roeg shot over from long-range, before Rudi Jones saw a rasping effort fly just wide of the target.

You felt that if we nabbed an early goal, maybe Steyning’s confidence would have rocked slightly. We didn’t, though, and the Barrowmen’s defence soon started to get on top of proceedings. 

There was plenty of effort from the men in red, but Steyning’s rearguard was limiting us to very few openings.

At the other end, Steyning continued to look a threat, especially when the game opened up as Newhaven threw more and more caution to the wind.

On a couple of occasions, we were indebted to Jonny Barnes-Galloway for keeping us in the fixture with some fine saves. Although I have to say that a third goal for them would have been harsh on us.

The Dockers kept plugging away; never losing belief that they were chasing a lost cause.

In the first minute of injury-time, we created arguably our best chance of the game. Ash Wadhams did brilliantly down the left before pulling the ball across the goal to the waiting Billy Oliver, but the striker could only shoot over. Not an easy chance on a bobbly surface, but one we needed to take to have any hope of staging what would have been a remarkable late comeback.

So there’s to be no fairytale final for the Dockers this season.

Don’t get me wrong, Steyning deserved the victory overall; despite the fact we had a real go in the second-half I can’t remember their keeper actually being forced into making a save. But the Newhaven players can certainly be proud of their efforts against a team that could very well be playing at a higher level once again next season.

A few months ago, we might have crumbled after the second goal went in. We almost certainly would have done, actually. But last night, each and every one of the boys showed true character to push Steyning right to the very end.

Hopefully we’ll see a similar amount of effort over the coming weekend, as we look forward to two league derbies.

We visit Seaford on Friday night (7:30 kick-off), before hosting Peacehaven on Easter Monday morning (11am kick-off). Six-points from those two games would be a great way to get over last night’s disappointment.

Giving this team’s record for bouncing back from disappointment, don’t bet against them doing it.

Your support at both matches would be greatly appreciated.

Come On You Dockers!

My man of the match (aka, the controversial part): Ryan Blunt. Worked tirelessly throughout, constantly driving the team forward (especially in the second-half) and looked the man most likely to provide the spark that would have gotten us back into the game.