In the gritty realm of Lewes’ bold fight,
On Hornchurch’s field, where mud clings tight,
A battle waged, not of sword or gun,
But with a ball, and it weren’t much fun.
The ball, a bullet in this muddy trench,
Each pass forlorn, each tackle a clench.
In this war of wills, where grit meets might,
Rooks cling to hope, with all their might.
Hornchurch advances, with relentless zeal,
But Lewes’ spirit is forged from Harvey’s and steel.
In the heart of battle, where dreams are made,
Lewes clings to a draw, unafraid.
As the final whistle cuts through the air,
A moment of respite from the muddy affair.
In this field of strife, under a sky so dark,
Lewes has battled, on Hornchurch’s treacherous park.
Barry Collins (with apologies to every war poet who has ever lived)
“It’s like The Somme out there,” is a phrase often heard on the terraces, except this time it was an insult to The Somme’s groundsman.
Hornchurch’s pitch has always been rotten, but this was a horror show. You could no more play football on it than you could play a lullaby with bagpipes. When Brad Pritchard came on in the second half, he wasn’t sure whether to wear football boots or his wellies from the allotment.
Little over a year ago, Hornchurch’s manager was in charge of Cardiff City. Now he’s bellowing at overweight centre-backs to wallop it 60 yards on a surface resembling an overflow car park. One can only imagine the anxiety dreams that must jolt him awake at 3am.
Hornchurch are running away with this league, presumably because visiting teams are knackered by the time they’ve walked from the dressing rooms, sited in a different county, to what loosely resembles a pitch. Let’s pray Hornchurch get promoted, hopefully to the National North, if only to smash a few misconceptions when fans from Scunthorpe or Darlington arrive in Essex. “Fookin’ hell, these southerners can’t even afford grass.”
No team could play football on that quagmire, all they could do was dig in and hope for the best. And though quality took the night off, you couldn’t question the effort that Tony’s boys put into this one.
Neither keeper had a save to make in the first half. Half of the away gaggle thought we’d scored after about ten minutes when Ola Ogunwamide smashed one into the side netting. You can forgive our lot for the error – even the Hubble Telescope would struggle to get a clear view from Hornchurch’s distant stands.
Hornchurch stepped up the aerial bombardment at the start of the second half and it was little surprise when they took the lead from a set-piece. We cleared the initial free-kick, before their massive centre-back temporarily forgot his role in life and dinked a lovely little ball over the top of our back line for substitute Liam Nash to tap home.
The Rooks clung on in there, even after the hosts took the lead. Ronnie Vint and Jake Elliott will be chugging the paracetamol this morning, having been called upon no fewer than 634 times to clear the ball with their bonces.
We didn’t muster a shot on target for the entire 90 minutes, which made Kalvin Lumbombo-Kalala’s equaliser all the sweeter. A ball was crossed in from the right and KLK got the faintest of glances to it. The ball trickled goalward and seemed to take an age to reach the net. Perhaps stung by that first-half false alarm, the away contingent were reluctant to celebrate until the Hornchurch keeper put his head in his hands and the euphoria erupted. In the words of The Youth Wing: Limbs.
A stolen point from the grimmest battle of 2023. Let’s hope we never see the like again.
Lewes: Harvey, Elliott, Oguntayo, Vint, Penney, Ogunwamide, Wood, Whelpdale, Olukoga, Moore, Dreher
Subs: Murtagh, Panyi, Pritchard, Lumbombo-Kalala, Salmon
Supporters Club man of the match: Ronnie Vint. The big fella at the back was imperious, winning almost all of the key battles in the air. And there were gazillions of them.