Heathfield & Horam 5 - 5 Hastings Athletic
Hastings win 5-3 on penalties

What a game...

I have been watching this team for many years and had the pleasure to be involved on the management for the passed couple of seasons and I can confidently say that is the best game I have watched us in. Quite simply the effort, desire, work rate, passion and overall play from every team member was off the scale. There has to be a winner and it is a great shame that it wasnt us, but that was edge of your seat stuff and I just want to thank all the boys for giving it their all and us as coaches and parents and fabulous game to watch.

From the blow of the first whistle we showed our intent and shocked the team that beat us two weeks ago and Sam S put us 1-0 up after 4mins with an assist from Conor. We carried on playing with the desire and were unfortunate on a couple of occasions and they can back in the 17th minute and went ahead at 21mins, so we were trailing 1-2. But we never dropped our heads and carried on with the same energy and it paid off and Harry levelled the game assisted by Lucas, so we went into the break 2-2.

As ever changes were made at half time but the play carried on on the same vein, the same want and desire and we took the lead again at 37mins thanks to a Conor goal with Sam S assisting. They came back again 2mins later and the game was levelled again at 3-3.

This really was end to end stuff and gripping!

We converted a corner in the 45th thanks to Conor assisted by Joseph and Will extended our lead further in the 53rd minute to make it 5-3.

This was amazing stuff, but the final 17minues was always going to be hard and they came back at 65mins to 5-4 and were then awarded a dubious penalty in the 70th minute which they converted and we finished normal time at 5-5.

The two periods of extra time were as frantic and exciting as normal time and the ball was pinging end to end but there were no further goals so we the game finished 5-5 and we moved to penalties.

This is always a hard way to decide a match and unfortunately we came off second after pens and Hastings took the game.

Quite frankly it was a cracking watch and everybody should be so proud, our progress over the last few weeks and months has been amazing, and games like this make our involvement as parents a joy, again thankyou to all players.

Thanks to Tim for selecting and running the team and to all parents that helped clear away...

We are definitely heading the right way, onwards and upwards...

UTHH...

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