Record friendly win as Fatboys hammer Hove

It rained goals at Downlands on Sunday as Hassocks Fatboys hit eight past Hove Lawns to record an 8-2 victory, their biggest ever friendly win.

How I am going to write the rest of this match report, frankly I don’t know. Too much happened in one 90 minutes to remember it all, let alone coming off the back of a 16 hour long piss up in Leicester. Oh if Brighton could even have a shot, let alone score eight times.

Here are some facts we can all be sure of. It should’ve been more than eight with the only thing keeping the scoreline down being a string of excellent saves from the Lawns goalkeeper. That we scored and created so many chances with captain Andy Brown on the bench for the first half and top scorer Jordan Walsh playing later in the day for the reserves was a huge positive.

Even more of a positive was that for the first time in an age we didn’t actually look like conceding either with the back four of Jon Ballantyne, Daniel Pidgeon, Gary Whittington and Lithuania youth international Arni Kublickas all impressing.

Despite Brown’s absence the 4-4-Brown-1 remained in place, with Peter Martin taking up the Brown role and Joe Brockes as the lone striker. Normally when you think of a lone striker, you think of a big and powerful number 9 who can hold up the ball and people can work around. Well, we are nothing if not different at the Fatboys and playing the smallest player in the team known as the Goblin may buck all kinds of trends, but ultimately it worked as Brockes bagged himself a hat-trick.

The game was only four minutes old when Martin opened the scoring. Rhyan Thwaites has looked in fine fettle in pre season, no doubt helped by his work location moving from Burgess Hill to Redhill which means no more pints of £1.99 Magners during his lunch break at The Six Gold Martletts. It was Thwaites who was the architect of the first, rampaging forward with his perseverance eventually leading to the ball falling to Martin who finished neatly.
12 minutes later and Martin turned supplier, splitting the Lawns defence who appealed in vain for the offside. Brockes had timed his run to perfection though and sold the keeper down the river with a typically clever finish for 2-0.

Goal three was a piece of genius from Martin. Many is the time that Martin has tried a rabona or an overhead kick or a Maradona turn. And many is the time it has resulted in Brown bellowing “PETE STOP TRYING STUPID STUFF”. Well, not this time as he met a lovely ball in from Jack Lewis with a ridiculous bicycle kick that flew into the top corner.

It was 4-0 before the 30 minute mark when Brockes and Martin again showed a great understanding with the former finishing off the latter’s pass after some delightful link up play and that was the cue for the Fatboys to take their foot off the gas a little.

We’d played some lovely passing football up until that point, especially going through Sam Holman, but as is always the case with the Fatboys there is a strong chance things will go awry when we start thinking we are Barcelona circa 2011. This time it was playing it across the back four that proved to be the downfall as McCarthy sold Kublickas short, the ball was intercepted and then pulled back and the Lawns striker swept home. 

Last time out against Lindfield Reserves the Fatboys made a raft of changes at the start of the second half and promptly let in two quick goals. Five subs were made here but there was no repeat of that this time, Brown, Ananda Hoque, Kieran Poulton, Chris Britton and Rob Lloyd all slotting in seamlessly.

So seamlessly in fact that the second half was only 11 minutes old when 4-1 became 5-1. Young debutant Poulton did well to beat a couple of men and he found Lewis who picked his spot and bent the ball expertly into the top right left corner for his first goal for the club.

Poulton and Britton were both denied by the keeper and Dave Linehan flashed an effort just wide before Lawns pulled a second back. Pidgeon clearly thought McCarthy had been underemployed and decided to give away a pretty needless penalty which was duly converted.

This was fantastic timing on Pidgeon’s part given just minutes before he had committed a tactical foul on the halfway line to prevent a quick break, smugly telling everyone “You’ve just got to know when and where to foul.” Yeah, not in the box with very little danger, Daniel.

That made it 5-2 but any hopes of a Lawns comeback were extinguished as the Fatboys would go onto add three more goals. Firstly Brockes teed up Brown for a clever finish, then Brockes sent a low free kick under the wall and into the bottom corner after Brown went down under minimal contact screaming like a woman who is giving birth to a 20 pound baby without any painkillers.

Lloyd rounded off the scoring when he was teed up by Britton. Britton enjoyed a fruitful game as a defender playing out of position up front and the clever assist was the least he deserved, finding Lloyd who produced a delightful finish which looped into the top corner. 8-2. What has happened to the real Fatboys?