“I might have to watch it on YouTube now I have scored two penalties”

After one hour of football in nasty Newhaven, things were not looking good for Hassocks Fatboys. The first game of this Sussex Sunday League double header with White Garden had ended 2-0 to the hosts and we had given one of our worst performances of the season which is saying something when we lost our opening game 9-0.

The earlier result in Newhaven was only part of the problem. Jack had now gone to a BBQ, Dave was crocked and there was still no sign of Karel, who it turned out had driven all the way to Newhaven before deciding he was too hungover to play, turned around and gone back to Crawley. As you do.

Of the bare 11 we had left, Scott and Mike were both injured just to add to the problems. Compare that to Garden, who had what what looked like a 19 man squad and an assembled film crew videoing the game with two cameras, as if this was the latest Avengers movie rather than a Sunday League game of football.

Or perhaps that should have been The Hunger Games, because the odds were very much not in favour of the men in purple – although we had at least learnt a few important lessons from the first hour of football to stand us in good stead for the second.

With the pitch resembling the surface of Mars which Matt Damon had to deal with when stranded on the Red Planet in The Martian, Garden had spent most of the opening hour smashing the ball from one end to the other. Their 2-0 victory suggested this was clearly a good idea and so we decided to copy them.

There was a formation change too. 4-3-3 was out and 4-4-2 in. Jordan and Davo were charged with playing as a front two whose sole purpose was to head the ball. Duck, Andy, Wilkesy and Willow made up a midfield four. Max played out-of-position at right back with Mike, Turner and Stuart making up the rest of the defence.

With Turner as our ‘playmaker’ smashing balls 80 yards down the pitch, it was a return to the style of football that took us to the County Cup Final in 2019. It didn’t take long to prove fruitful here either as we soon went 1-0 ahead. Duck swung over a corner, Turner headed it back across goal and Davo was on hand to nod home.

The lead was unfortunately very short lived. Almost from kick off, Garden went up the other end and an iffy clearance gave the hosts the chance to equalise which they duly took, drilling the ball past Scott and into the bottom corner.

That proved to be the only goal from open play of the entire game. Two corners gave us two opportunities to move 3-1 ahead before half time via what can only be described as some wonderful over-the-top theatrics from Mike.

For the first, Duck swung a delivery over to the far post where a Garden player challenged Mike, who went down as if he were in Platoon. The referee pointed to the spot and to say that Garden were unhappy would be a slight understatement.

A couple of their players rather wonderfully told the young official he could watch his decision back on YouTube later and be very embarrassed about it. Willow meanwhile could look forward to seeing himself successfully convert the penalty.

If that penalty was a little soft, then Garden could have no complaints about the second which arrived 90 seconds later. Another Duck corner came over and when it was only partially cleared, Mike chased after the loose ball. There was little danger, Mike was heading away from goal and still playing partly injured.

Quite what went through the Garden player’s mind then is anybody’s guess, but he lost the plot to scythe Mike down in the box. You would need to be brainwashed like Bennett Marco in The Manchurian Candidate to think that it was not a penalty and this moment of madness gave Willow the chance to make 3-1. “I wasn’t going to watch the highlights back, but I might to now I have scored two penalties,” Willow said afterwards.

Chances came and went for both teams after that. Scott had to make a decent save backpedalling when it looked like he might end up Jonesyed after the ball spooned over him off a Garden shin. Early in the second half he turned a low free kick around the post and made a fine one-on-one stop following a failed offside trap.

At the opposite end, Garden’s goalkeeper made a wonderful save from Andy and Stuart was not far away when charging forward from left back to cut inside and fire one inches wide from distance.

With 10 minutes of the game remaining, Garden were reduced to 10 men when their central midfielder was shown a straight red for dissent after winning a free kick. Yes, he got the decision and still managed to head for an early bath for foul and abusive language which would not have looked out of place in The Wolf of Wall Street.

Garden’s linesman then decided to stroll onto the pitch and managed to get himself sent off for apparently threatening the official. We have been playing Sunday League for the best part of a decade and that is the first time anyone could recall seeing a referee an assistant referee a red card.

It later transpired that the linesman and the sent-off player were brothers, so perhaps they were Newhaven’s version of the Kray Twins, as portrayed rather well by Tom Harding in Legend.

For some reason, the cameras were turned off during the 10 minute delay to the action as a succession of Garden players gave the referee their two-pence worth, so there is no chance of watching it back on YouTube.

What the double-red card did do is inspire Garden and they were the better team in the closing stages, making it 3-2 with a header from a corner which probably should have been a goal kick.

That left the game On a Knife Edge (2017 film directed by Jeremy Williams). The final five minutes were rather like The Alamo and when Garden won another corner in the last seconds and Turner said “They’re going to score here, aren’t they?” it was what we were all thinking.

Unbelievably, they did not. The corner floated harmlessly out of play despite even the Garden goalkeeper having come on a Charge of the Light Brigade forward. The full time whistle blew and Garden were not happy about that either, surrounding the referee to complain that there were still another two minutes left to play.

A quarter of an hour later, the cameras had been packed away and both sides had threes points in the bag and yet as we departed Eastside Rec the Garden manager was still talking to the poor match official, a discussion that may well have gone on for longer than the uncut version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Can’t wait to watch it all back on YouTube.