Worthing & Horsham District Sunday League – vets Division.
Sunday 7th October 2018, Shipley Football Field.
Hills Farm Lane Vets 5 – 3 FC Galaxy Vets
HT – 2-2
Benjamin Ferguson
Daecon Leggatt
Shaun Eldridge
Darron Mitchell (Captain & Player Manager)
Richard Bramwell
Liam Kelly
Gareth Jones
Harry New
Tomek Eichler
Dan Purchase (1)
Karim Hamouda (4)
Subs
Trev Evershed
Mark Muphy
Hills Farm continued their unbeaten start to the defence of their title with a hard fought but well deserved home win against newcomers, Galaxy Vets. Manager Darron was left with a heavily depleted squad due to “other commitments” (such as watching Fulham get mullered by Arsenal and a cat trapped in a tree in Crawley) but shuffled his pack to produce a team strong enough to get the result, and in style!
Top scorer, Karim Hamouda improved his goals to chances ratio (1/5) no harm with a good four goals whilst his strike partner Dan Purchase grabbed a deserved goal during a hard working performance.
Having won their first two games and facing bottom of the table opponents the danger was that Hills Farm would underestimate The Galaxy but these worries seemed unfounded early on as the champions raced into a two goal lead thanks to Karim with great assists from Tomek and Dan Purchase. But Galaxy had other ideas and they roared back to draw level by half time with some lightning strikes through the back three. Big D adjusted to a more conventional back four and half time came with no more additions to the scoreline.
HT – 2-2
Despite a strong bench at his disposal Darron rightly stuck to the starting eleven and no changes were made for the second half. Hills Farm started strongly and it wasn’t long before Karim got his hat-trick thanks to a visionary pass from wide right by Daecon Leggatt. Playing as emergency right back Daecon looked up and put so much back spin on the floated pass that it sold the outrushing keeper and sat up nicely for the best Egyptian striker in England.
Shortly after Dan P got his well deserved goal following silky wing skills from Tomek and the two-goal cushion was restored. It seemed that the home team could relax at last but Galaxy pounced on a defensive lapse by (insert name here – I’m not brave enough…) and narrowed the margin to 4-3.
With a nervous finish looming disaster struck with mercurial Pole Tomek going down in agony with another hamstring injury and the bench was finally called upon. The most successful manager in the clubs history, Murph, was brought into the fray and was immediately in the thick of it. It was frantic stuff for a while but then Dan P set up Karim for his fourth and the Farms fifth and the game was won. Big D called on Trev to replace Dan P up front and the Champions played some good stuff to see out the game and continue the great start.
This could have been a tricky fixture given the absentee regulars but a great performance all round, including newcomers Shaun Eldridge at centre back and Harry New in midfield showed how important a good squad is in this league. Hills Farm looked the better team but Galaxy will take heart from this result! Good luck to them – they played the game in great spirit and deserve to get better results as the season goes on.
Author: Murph