Cup football takes centre stage
It might be May but there’s still plenty of football to be played with the National League having one more full weekend to go and various cup finals and play-off games signalling that the end though must be close.
Tuesday night’s game was the Sussex Senior Cup Final between Worthing and Brighton Under 23’s, played at the home of the latter the Amex Stadium, more about that bit a little later.
I was joined by a couple of mates, Steve Watson and Max Mitchell who is the voice or tweets I should say of the excellent @Marigoals page on Twitter, his first taste of the Rebels in action.
Having already secured the Isthmian Premier Division title some three weeks ago, Worthing were looking to make it a double for the season in what has been a fantastic campaign for the Rebels and Adam Hinshelwood.
The early exchanges were very even, Worthing coming off the back of three weeks without a game having completed their league season and the young Seagulls adjusting to playing with some crowd noise inside the Premier League venue.
And was the newly placed National League South side who took the lead, Reece Myles-Meekums upended in the penalty area, Ollie Pearce the scorer from the spot on 24 minutes.
The lead lasted for seven minutes, a superb cross in from the left hand side by Zak Sturge and finished well by Lorent Tolaj gave Harrison Male no chance in the Rebels goal.
Albion should have been in front soon after, Todd Miller heading over the bar when well placed. As it was Brighton were in front six minutes before half time, a mistake from Will Seager saw Miller play the perfect through ball to set Tolaj away and he outpaced the Worthing defence executing a fine finish past Male, however the celebration of taking the shirt off, cupping the ear and milking the camera was quite frankly embarrassing given it was a County Cup final.
Changes were made at half time for the Rebels with Dajon Goulding entering the fray as Hinshelwood sought to level up the tie. Again, there wasn’t much to choose between the two sides although the passing from the Albion was much crisper across the surface.
With the next goal being the all important and crucial one, it went to Brighton a minute before the hour mark. Jack Spong was able to pick out the unmarked full back Cam Peupion in the box and he slotted home for the third Albion goal.
On 65 minutes Albion put the game beyond Worthing, Andy Moran found inside the box, shifted the ball to his left and fired past Male seemingly putting one Albion hand at least on the trophy.
Worthing however kept coming forward and brought some respectability to the score line seven minutes from time as Joel Colbran stabbed the ball home from a corner giving the Rebels some hope as they pushed forward in search of a third soon after to make the final minutes more nervy but to no avail.
Rebels suffered a last minute blow when Jasper Pattenden was sent off for a last minute challenge outside the box as Benico Baker-Boaitey was bearing down on Male’s goal, five minutes of stoppage time failed to add to Worthing’s tally giving Albion the trophy in front of 3,086 supporters.
Four very well taken goals from the young Seagulls and whether it might have made a difference if the game was played soon after the season end for Worthing we’ll never know.
What wasn’t so impressive were two things which I’ll go into more detail about as it wasn’t what I expected. Firstly, the organisation was extremely poor, whether that falls on Brighton or the Sussex FA I don’t know. Parking was a shambles considering the size of the crowd and the space at the Amex, either it should have been a first come, first served or directions to alternate car parks instead of arriving having been advised you didn’t need a definite online booking.
After the four mile hike back up to the stadium queues for a 3,000 crowd to get into a 30,000 seater stadium, that’s pretty poor in anyone’s book and honestly makes me wonder that others would and could have done it better.
The match officials. Regular readers will know I don’t like to criticise them too much as it’s a job I would never do myself but if that’s the best Sussex has to offer I do worry. The referee seemed a little starstruck in the middle at a Premier League venue, far too happy to let top level type cute fouls be overridden but happy to blow up for everything Worthing committed, no choice on the red card but that was about as right as he got.
As always some wonderful pictures from the excellent Martin Denyer (@MartinDenyer), if you get a chance head onto Twitter and check out the links to his pictures, some fantastic shots he’s taken all year and they deserve to be seen.
Still more games to go for me before the season ends but already there’s plenty of non-league chat going about already including initial league allocations for next season, I could blog every day on something, if only someone would pay me for it……….
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