What a rotten week this has been for the club.

Earlier this week, we received the sad news that David Arscott had passed away. I won’t pretend I knew David well, but I enjoyed many a chat with him over the years about the Rooks’ fortunes. He always used to turn up at AGMs, pen and pad in hand, asking sharp, intelligent questions.

He was a writer, and that was glaringly obvious from his match reports, which he posted on the fans forum under the moniker of Spur. Unlike the flannel you normally get here, they were taut, well-observed accounts of the games. Part of the reason I decided to give the match reports here a different slant is because David, Tom Harper and others already had the ground expertly covered for those who wanted the raw detail of the game.

On behalf of the Supporters Club, our condolences go to his son Jack (Young Spur) and the rest of David’s family and friends.

There wasn’t any lightening of the mood after what happened at Cray Valley PM yesterday, either. For the second time in a month, one of our players suffered a badly broken leg, following Sammy Quayle’s injury in the women’s FA Cup game in November.

You know within seconds when an injury’s a bad one. The reaction of the players, the medical staff being waved on, that awful scream from the player themselves.

Yesterday, all that was compounded by appalling conditions. Strong wind and near-horizontal rain, on an already sodden pitch on which the player is lying and cannot be moved. There was a time when ambulances would be there within 10-15 minutes for injuries like that. In peak winter, on the outskirts of London, after the past 15 years of NHS shredding? In some ways, Marcel was fortunate he only had to wait 45 minutes for the ambulance to arrive, although it absolutely wouldn’t have felt like it at the time.

A word for the staff of both teams. Both physios raced on to the pitch to help him and were there throughout. They (normally) aren’t paramedics, they aren’t really trained to deal with that kind of trauma, they don’t have the equipment. It’s a big ask, especially in those conditions, and they didn’t need asking. Neither did the teammates who surrounded and supported Marcel, or the staff who held a tarpaulin over Marcel to try and keep him dry. Well done to everyone involved.

As we did for Sammy, we’ve created a page for Marcel, if you want to leave a message of support. Click the link below to leave your message.

The referee made a reasonably swift decision to abandon the game, within about 20 minutes of the injury. Some on the socials wondered why the ref called it so quickly when the women’s game was suspended for over an hour before being allowed to resume.

I wouldn’t criticise the ref. The conditions were dismal and players were clearly distressed by what had happened, plus tempers were running hot after the nature of the challenge that injured Marcel for which the player was rightly shown the red card. Each situation is unique.

It’s almost certain the game will be replayed, even though there was only 13 minutes left, with the Rooks two goals to the good and Cray down to ten men. It will be a massive injustice if the entire game is played afresh, because there’s almost no doubt we would have gone on to win the game. The injustice further compounded by the continued absence of Ethan Kaiser, who was serving the second game of his suspension at Cray but now won’t be able to play against Dulwich on Tuesday.

It was also one of our best, grittiest displays of the season. We survived a backs-to-the-wall first half, kicking into the wind, with Toby Bull to thank for a string of good saves to keep the game level. Danny Bassett’s fine injury-time finish from a Matty Warren cross was the only shot on target we had in the entire first half.

The second half, with the wind in our sails, proved how well we’d done to get through the first half unscathed. And when Gianluca Botti planted home the second midway through the half, it really did feel like the game would only end one way. Sadly, of course, it didn’t end at all.

Speedy recovery, Marcel.

Lewes: Bull, Warren, McIntosh, Puemo, Mundele, Muirhead, Sablier, Allsopp, Ekpiteta, Bassett, Botti

Subs not used: Morris, Ladapo, Ghannam, Hutchinson, Allen