Breaking the recent run of gloomy, cool, damp and windy game days both home and away, it was to remarkably pleasant spring conditions that the doughty but injury ravaged 2s arrived at fortress Valence shortly after taking their midday victuals. Reinforcements had been strategically deployed, in the forms of Messers Robinson and Sandberg who dutifully answered the rallying cry. Furthermore, evergreen goal botherer Chris Stille.
Shortly before push back, Andrew “Sonic” Lee expressed characteristically optimistic clairvoyant insight in predicting a sleepy start from Sutton Valence and so it proved, with Folkestone having the better of the early exchanges, with Sutton Valence snatching at passes and generally struggling to do the simple things well. Fortunately Folkestone, whilst faring generally better were finding it hard to string things together in the Sutton Valence 23.

Around the 10 minute mark Sutton Valence managed to steady the ship somewhat and began to move the ball more convincingly with Whitmill and Hodges probing regularly down the right, and Lee, Robinson and Stille finding space increasingly frequently to the left.

Midway through the first half the deadlock in this increasingly entertaining fixture was broken with a fine foray down the right flank involving Hodge, Johnson and Angel resulting in Johnson surging diagonally into the D from the right and clipping a splendid lifted strike into the top right of the net. The home crowd roared, and Sutton Valence were in business, and carried a 1-0 lead into half time. Team talk: Keep calm and carry on.

With conditions continuing to be extremely pleasant as the second half began, it sadly didn’t take long until cracks appeared in the hitherto unflappable Sutton Valence armour, and fewer than five minutes into the second half Folkstone levelled the score at 1-1 with a somewhat questionable lifted ball into the D finding the stick of one of their forwards who smartly slotted home.

To their credit, Sutton Valence heads didn’t drop and piled further waves of pressure down both flanks quickly resulted in a short corner. Your author’s recollection is that this first short quickly resulted in a second, when a deft switch to Lee on the left saw him duly executing a Sonic Special™, and putting an increasingly confident Sutton Valence back ahead - 2-1.

Shortly thereafter a Folkestone attack down the Sutton Valence left flank saw stalwart Robinson twist and overextend in a typically mal-coordinated attempt to defend the line, resulting in him limping off the pitch - ironically with a hamstring tweak the likes of which had facilitated his elevation to the heady heights of the twos in the first place - and playing no further part in the game.

The now bare-11 Sutton Valence continued to probe Folkestone repeatedly, but the Optomists remained dangerous on the break, and duly won a short midway through the second half. Debut-season Sutton Valence stopper Andy Hornsey managed to parry the first short effort magnificently but was powerless to prevent the rebound being slotted home to level the score.

Following this, Sutton Valence lost their shape a little and for the next 5 minutes were uncharacteristically scrappy. Folkestone quickly sensed this and turned the screw, probing Sutton Valence from both flanks repeatedly before some crisp passing finally unlocked the Sutton Valence defence and allowed a smart pass from the Sutton Valence right across the goal to be well finished at the far post, giving the Folkestone the lead for the first time in the match.

Again to Sutton Valence’s credit heads remained high, and the remainder of the match was one way traffic, with Folkestone just about fending off wave after wave of Sutton Valence attack. Much against his own expectations the 1.5 legged Robinson did manage to make one final contribution to the game less than two minutes from time whilst retrieving a dead ball from the sideline and returning it to the field of play. This quite correctly resulted in a thoroughly deserved and entirely necessary green card for the injured Robinson, and saw Captain Harrison being required to spend the remaining 90 seconds of the game grabbing a breather and rehydrating.

Fortunately this had little impact on the game, with Sutton Valence continuing to dominate play in the Folkestone 23 but regrettably the waves of late pressure and repeated short corners were to no avail, with the final score 2-3 in the Optimists favour.

Goal: Chris Johnson, Andrew Lee

Report By: Alastair Robinson

Team:
Alex Hodges
Andrew Horsey
Andrew Lee
Ben Tragett
Brett Angel
Chris Stille
Alex Sandburg
Mark Whitmill
Russel Blanchard
Alastair Robinson
Chris Johnson
Harrison Sharpe

Next & Final Match K Sport (A) 12:00