Desperate times call for desperate measures. After watching us concede our 93rd goal from a corner this season, I’ve turned to AI for help.
Frankly, we didn’t need an enormous water-guzzling data centre to tell us to “drink strategically”. Some us have been mastering that over the past 15 years. Just look at this beauty we landed on before the game yesterday…
But even the emotional support cushion of five tactical pints in Eltham’s finest drinking emporiums cannot dull the pain of another conceded corner.
This despite Pitts trying our 456th different centre-back combination of the season at Cray yesterday. Olly Hamstead came in to partner fellow new boy and captain Jamie Watson at the heart of defence. It says something about the revolving door nature of our defence this season that the centre-back with the most Lewes appearances this season was playing for Cray, Dan Bowry having made the switch back to South London a couple of weeks ago.
Of course, Pitts has only been back in the building about ten minutes himself and change is to be expected. And the major positive change is we’re suddenly picking up points again.
It didn’t look like we’d be nursing a quiet point after Cray took that 12th minute lead. A header from the c-word smacked off the bar and Sonny Black buried the rebound. More than a few of the decently-sized travelling support adhered to point 6 of the AI’s coping strategy, muttering a little f-bomb to themselves.
Truth be told, we were pretty rotten for the rest of the first half. We couldn’t get passing moves going, the ball wasn’t sticking up front, the Cray keeper didn’t even get his kit dirty.
The second half was an improvement, especially when Charlie Walker, Billie Clark and Jordan Maguire-Drew emerged from the bench in dribs and drabs.
In fact, the man that Maguire-Drew replaced, Devonte West, almost created what might have been the turning point of the game. He was bearing down a goal, just about to pull the trigger from the edge of the box, when a Cray Valley defender literally saved the ball with his hands on the deck. Denying a clear goalscoring opportunity? Well, he was about to have a free punt at goal from the edge of the area, not massively dissimilar to the goal he scored on Tuesday, but the ref deemed it only caution-worthy.
Still, a bit of quality earned us a deserved equaliser. Once again, Ryan Bernal got to the byline (as he did for West’s goal on Tuesday) and this time he cut the ball across to Charlie Walker, who prodded home his first goal in a Rooks shirt, which is all the more remarkable since we’d announced he’d left a fortnight ago!
Still, as Pitts has proved, you never truly cut your ties with Lewes. As long as you’ve got a shaky knowledge of defending set-pieces, you can check out any time you like, but you never can leave.
Lewes: Rogers, Bernal, Hamstead, Morgan, Asiedu, Muirhead, Christian-Law, Bennett (Clark), West (Morgan-Drew), Morgan, Franzen-Jones (Walker)
Unused subs: Salaam, Hamouchene
Supporters Club man of the match: For sheer bloody persistence and ripping up his P45, we’re giving it to Charlie Walker