Everyone is a bit on edge. If we win here, we go top of the league (largely due to almost everyone else still being in the FA Cup). Cheshunt, meanwhile, are still scratching around for their first win of the season. The nervous energy could power the floodlights, even among the fairly sparse Cheshunt crowd.
The nerves are evident on the pitch from the get-go. Ryan Gondoh gets in behind and is one-on-one with the keeper, albeit from a tight angle. He shoots tamely at R’avan Constable, the danger averted, but the Cheshunt defence instantly turn on one another and the lino, desperate to find someone to blame.
They’re even angrier when Gondoh gets in behind for a second time, this time dragging his shot into the side netting. The 16, Charlie Naylor, completely loses his rag.
“Calm down, 16,” yells one of the Youth Wing.
“P*** off, you fanny,” replies the harassed defender, marking the first time I’ve heard the word “fanny” used as an insult since I was at school in Essex in 1991.
By this time, Cheshunt are already one up. Jack Enkh gives away a cheap free-kick on our left, they whip in the ball towards one of their three or four big lumps, and it’s eventually bundled past Louis to give them a ninth-minute lead.
Cheshunt are a side of contrasts. They’ve got two centre-backs who are among the first to know when it’s raining and a left-back whose mum must have been very friendly with Ronnie Corbett. They put the wee man on the back stick for a corner, leaving about six feet of clear air between him and the crossbar, and yet somehow when Josh Spinks wins a header from a corner, the dinky toy heads it off the line. It’s going to be one of those days.
The second half follows pretty much the same pattern as the first. We’re well on top, must have 75% of the ball, but we can’t get the bugger in the net. A deep cross from the right finds Charlie Walker at the back stick, who heads the ball back across the face of goal, but Brian Garzon struggles to reach the waist-height ball and ends up flopping it just wide of a largely unguarded net.
They go straight down the other end and score. A long throw isn’t dealt with and Tommy Wood, once of this parish, bundles it home.
For one of our number, it’s too much. Supporters Club vice chair Janette gives up on the game and tucks into her Ruth Jones novel. Football in a library?
I’m legally obliged at this stage to point out that Lewes FC Supporters Club does not condone reading during disappointing second halves. Unless, of course, it’s The Black & The Red, the Supporters Club magazine, on sale now inside all good football grounds.
Cheshunt scored another header right at the death, and young Mackenzie Richardson leapt off the bench to grab us the very definition of a consolation goal, but the only league we’re topping this weekend is The Best Read Fans table.
Lewes: Rogers, Mundele, Spinks, Owen, Enkh (Cox), Briggs (Hamstead), Allen, Garzon (Richardson), Gondoh, Fisher (Unwin), Walker (Newson)
Supporters Club player of the match: Odd as it is to pick a keeper in a 3-1 defeat, Louis Rogers didn’t do anything wrong, and made a couple of good saves in the first half, especially.