Brown bags his first of the season to down the Rocks

Our first visit to Bognor’s excellent set-up at Nyewood Lane proved to be a very rewarding one, as we produced another impressive performance to record our third successive victory and climb into the top half of the table. No praise can be too high for the way everyone at the club has reacted to recent set-backs and this was another demonstration of our solidarity by the management team and players, plus those fans who made the trip down to the Sussex coast to applaud “their” team for the well-deserved victory.

Both teams had to make late changes after the warm-up, in our case, the prolific Luke Hopper being replaced Nicholas Bignall, as the teams cancelled each other out in the early stages, Lewis Ward making a fairly easy save and Callum Willmoth chasing back to clear the ball after a long throw by Alex Parsons. Louie Soares threatened as he ran onto a through ball, but appeals for a corner were turned down by the referee at the end of a even first half.

We started well after the interval and we built up a good attack before Nicholas Bignall squared the ball to Soares, who calmly slotted it past Dan Lincoln after 53 minutes.

Ward had to race well outside his area to volley away a dangerous through ball. Scott Rees had been hobbling for a while before he was replaced by loanee Jordan Simpson as the home side fought back. A corner from Ben Swallow flying across the face of the goal for a harmless goal-kick and a free-kick from the same player being deflected behind off the defensive wall.
We weathered the storm, however and went 2-0 up midway through the half when Stefan Brown calmly slid the ball past Lincoln after a neat build-up, but the home side fought back well and the result was still in the balance after Jimmy Wild had reduced the arrears after 77 minutes and they pushed everyone forward.

We held on, however, a point-blank save by Ward from a close-range shot was the nearest we came to conceding the equaliser , and injury-time came and went before the final whistle set the seal on a fine win and we were all able to cheer the victors off the pitch.

Team;Lewis Ward, Rhys Tyler, Paul Stonehouse, Ian Herring, Gareth Thomas, Callum Willmoth,James Clark, Scott Rees(Jordan Simpson),Stefan Brown, Nicholas Bignall(Jamal Lawrence),Louie Soares.
Subs; Tom Meecham, Jon Boardman