You want to know my favourite sound in a football ground? It’s no sound at all. It’s that pregnant half-second or so of silence, just after a shot is struck, where fans know it’s going in, but they dare not cheer. Yet.
You’ll witness it here, just before Archie Tamplin strokes our third home in the gasping seconds of yesterday’s game. Soak it in.
Talking of soaking it in… that pitch.
I don’t know who did the pitch inspection for Hastings yesterday morning – Jacques Cousteau, perhaps – but that pitch was sopping wet. Gondoh and KLK both tried to dribble the ball twice in the opening five minutes, then rightly gave up. The game shouldn’t have started, but I’m bloody glad it did.
For all the praise (rightly) lavished on the carpet at The Pan, two of the Rooks’ best performances this season have come on rotten surfaces: the post-Christmas draw on Hornchurch’s slough and this victory over a bang-in-form Hastings.
It’s fair to say optimism wasn’t overflowing in the same manner as the guttering in Hastings’ main stand. The Youth Wing started the gallows humour chants after about ten minutes (“How **** must you be, we’ve just had a shot”) following our recent patch of iffy form and lack of card-carrying striker, but it was locum forward Keiran Murtagh who proved pivotal in this one.
It was Murtagh’s fine pass that put the Rooks in front after 20-odd minutes. He slipped the ball through to KLK, who squirted the ball home from a tight angle.
That prompted a glorious period of utter head loss from the home side. Minutes after Tommie Fagg was booked for protesting about a penalty that never was, Jack Dixon (twice of this parish, of course) had a proper tantrum over another perceived injustice. He threw himself to the floor like a toddler in Tesco’s who’s just been told he can’t have the Chocolate Buttons. And when the referee obviously booked him, he doubled-down on the dissent by clapping the official. Two yellow cards in a matter of seconds, and not for the first time in his career, Dicko got first dibs on the Radox.
So, 1-0 up at half-time with the home side down to ten men, and now the biggest threat was the weather. It had tipped down for most of the first half, making that sponge of a pitch even worse. “Wouldn’t it be bloody typical if this was abandoned now?” was the talk on the half-time terraces.
Thankfully, the clouds cleared, and before long we had clear distance between us and Hastings too. Murtagh got himself to the byline, pulled a ball right across the face of the goal and KLK was there smash the ball home. NOTHING CAN GO WRONG NOW.
Well, apart from them getting a penalty. From a distance and behind rain-spattered specs, this one looked the softest of all of Hastings’ penalty shouts, but the ref finally got sick of their incessant whining and caved in. Penalty despatched, amid much sucking of teeth in the away end.
Hastings obviously piled on the pressure in the final stages, but we stood up to it well. Murtagh had a glorious chance to close it out after Ola slid a ball across the six-yard box, but he didn’t stretch out a leg to poke it home.
Instead he waited for injury time, when he danced around a couple of defenders, popped a lovely ball into Tamplin’s path and the young sub did the rest. Lovely, lovely stuff.
At least, it was lovely, until scenes after the final whistle…
Midway through the second half, one of Hastings’ fans started a scuffle in the away end, before he was eventually dragged away by a lone steward. Inexplicably, he wasn’t thrown out of the ground, but allowed to loiter just behind the dugouts with a pack of his pals.
When the final whistle blew, with the Rooks in full celebration mode, the goons stood waiting for a second chance. And with the Rooks fans having to walk past to get out of the ground, everyone knew what was coming. Everyone apart from the stewards, who decided the real threat was the Youth Wing celebrating with the players and went to stand gormlessly on the pitch.
Consequently, one of our fans was assaulted by the idiot. Dragged to the floor, and kicked and punched while he was down there for good measure. Only the actions of surrounding supporters saved him from what could have been a serious pasting.
A young woman who was with the guy on the wrong end of the beating was, understandably, very distressed.
To that young woman and her family, the Supporters Club want to make amends. We’ll pay for you to have a beach hut for any men’s or women’s game of your choice, so hopefully you and your family can have a much better day out the next time you come to a game, and see that incidents like that are (mercifully) very rare.
We’ll try and find you on the terraces in the coming weeks, but if you want to get in touch, drop us an email here and we’ll sort out the beach hut.
Lewes: Harvey, Ming, Vint, Elliott, Oguntayo, Penney, Pritchard, Whelpdale, Gondoh, Lumbombo-Kalala, Murtagh
Subs: Tamplin, Wood, Ogunwamide, Sablier, Olukoga
Supporters club man of the match: Sam Oguntayo put in a tremendous shift at left-back, but with three cracking assists it has to go to Keiran Murtagh. He might not be the long-term solution up front, but he made the difference here.
Boyesy’s brilliant photos:
