“The worst game of football I have ever played in”

The positive of losing your first game of the season 9-0 is that things can only get better from that point on. They would be hard pushed to get much worse following this debacle of a Sunday from Hassocks Fatboys.

It was a perfect storm of circumstances that led to Queens Park inflicting upon the first team the second heaviest defeat the side has ever suffered after the 2017-18 season’s 12-2 loss to AFC 2015.

Virtually every player in green was carrying some sort of knock by the end or proceedings. Combine that with a referee who made baffling decision after baffling decision and opponents who were bloody good and a 9-0 hammering was the result.

Andy Brown, Stuart Brown and Jamie Wilkes-Spies all arrived at sunny East Brighton Park with injuries picked up the day before. So bad was Andy’s rib problem that he decided to take Hayley’s arthritis medication to try and get him through the 90 minutes.

Rather than ease the pain, this simply sent Andy insane midway through the second half in an astonishing incident which we will come to shortly.

There were also a distinct lack of defenders on show which forced a number of individuals to be played out of position. Regular midfielders Jack Lewis and Jake Philpott started at right back and centre back respectively.

Jake partnered Steve Spies who was celebrating his 51st birthday with Jon Ballantyne rounding off the back four. This was Bally’s first competitive start in nearly a year and having said earlier in the week he was too fat and unfit to play 20 minutes, here he was being asked get through 90.

Ronnie Devonish, Wilkesy and Stuart made up a midfield that could barely move whilst Dave Keane was on the right of the front three, Karel Kutaa through the middle and Andy on the left.

Two ominous sentences were uttered during the pre-game warm up. On hearing the news that Jack would be starting at right back, somebody questioned in which minute he would end up being sent off. “I have never been sent off in my life,” said Jack in response. Not only was this a massive shock, but it also seemed to be seriously tempting fate.

Bally then decided to remind everyone of that period in time when he scored own goals in the opening game of the season for three years running. “It hasn’t happened for a while now though,” said Bally, which again looked like a comment which could come back to haunt the little Scottish full back.

The tone for the morning was set within about 60 seconds of kick off. Queens Park charged straight into the Fatboys’ half and fired a shot wide. From the resulting goal kick, Scott McCarthy gave it short to Spiesy who played the perfect pass straight to the feet of the home striker.

Thankfully, this seemed to catch our opponents by surprise and they blasted the opportunity off target for another goal kick. “Sorry lads, it will get better” said Spiesy after that moment. Needless to say, it didn’t.

Given that we lost 9-0, it took a surprisingly long time for Queens Park to open the scoring. Over 25 minutes to be precise. A lovely switch of play sent the home number seven scampering away down the right wing, where he attempted to twist and turn himself away from the attentions of Bally.

Bally to be fair did well to stick with him for the best part of 30 yards, right up until the number seven made it into the box and pulled the trigger. There was a despairing block from Bally which only succeeded in taking the ball away from Scott and into the back of the net.

Now the big question – had Bally just scored an own goal within half an hour of reminding everyone that he had not scored an own goal for four years? Unfortunately, the shot was on target before it was deflected in and so it went down as the number seven’s.

Having seen Bally get away with tempting fate, Jack decided to become increasingly risky with regards his own “never been sent off” comments and it was little surprise to see him booked for a wild lunge on a Queens Park player.

Far more surprising was when Young Matt Perry entered the book after accidentally running into a man. Master Perry would not say boo to a goose and yet the referee had him marked down as potentially more dangerous than Peter Sutcliffe, an opinion that baffled both teams.

Queens Park’s second arrived when the Fatboys were unable to clear their lines from a set piece and the centre back rifled a sweetly hit volley through a crowd and into the top corner for the goal of the game.

Making it into half time just 2-0 behind seemed like a miracle in itself. We had not strung together more than three passes in the opening 45 minutes and 80% of the game had taken place in the Fatboys’ half.

The Queens Park goalkeeper had been so underemployed that he could have read all 1400 pages of War & Peace, written a 2000 word review on Amazon and still had time to invent a flying car and cook a six course meal good enough for Gordon Ramsay.

Ronnie ran off to the nearby cafe at half time because he needed “sugaring” which is apparently what younger people say when they need a can of Coca Cola. Andy decided he could no longer carry on and so Stuart limped back on.

Despite this disruption and the fact we had just delivered a ghastly performance, there was still some belief that we could get back into the game. Finding a goal ourselves before Queens Park managed a third would be crucial.

That nearly happened too. Duck did well to get away down the right and his low cross into the box found Karel who was front, centre and only five yards out.

The former Namibian Under 21 international needed to simply poke the cross either side of the home goalkeeper and the Fatboys would potentially be back in the tie. Karel though fell over his own leg and the loose ball trickled harmlessly towards the goalkeeper.

From there, Queens Park broke quickly up the other end where Spiesy decided it would be a good idea to rugby tackle their striker to the ground in the area. So much for keeping it tight before the hosts got their third as the penalty was fired low and hard into the bottom corner.

Queens Park’s fourth came as the result of a free kick that was never a free kick being delivered into the box where Jake met it with a brilliant header past Scott. It might not have been Bally notching, but we did at least have the first candidate for the Own Goal of the Season Award on the board with the campaign less than an hour old.

To make matters worse, Ronnie entered the sin bin for his protests against the free kick decision. 4-0 down and facing 10 minutes with only 10 men, it was little surprise when Queens Park added a fifth.

This proved to be the catalyst for Andy to lose his mind in spectacular fashion on the side line, shouting: “REFEREE YOU ****ING CHEATING ****” at a volume so loud you could probably hear it over in Eastbourne.

As the referee wandered over to show Andy an inevitable red card for his outburst, Andy put up an impassioned defence. “YOU WEREN’T WATCHING, YOU DON’T KNOW IT WAS ME WHO SAID THAT,” he shouted.

Which might have been a convincing argument were it not very obviously the exact same voice, dialect and tone pleading innocence as called the referee a **** in the first place. Not to mention that Andy was on the side lines with four women, none of whom would have been likely to scream such obscenities in a deep male voice.

There seems little point dwelling on what happened next. Queens Park added four more goals, three really good finishes and another from a free kick after Miles Collins was adjudged to have fouled a winger on the edge of the box.

The referee showed Miles a harsh yellow for that, describing the tackle as “cynical.” Miles tried to explain to the referee that he did not know what that meant. Unfortunately for Miles, the official was having none of it, even though he had earlier witnessed Miles do well to shepherd a ball out of play before asking “What’s that then, a goal kick?” as if he were a man who had never played football in his life.

With 15 minutes remaining, the Fatboys found themselves in the strange position of starting to time waste to avoid conceding any more goals.

That the score was only nine was largely down to Scott, who pulled off three excellent second half saves to prevent it turning into a cricket score. It is never a good sign when your goalkeeper wins man-of-the-match in a 9-0 defeat, but it was just one of those mornings.

Stuart summed it up best when saying afterwards: “Every player on the pitch at the end was injured except Miles. And he has got a brain injury”.

One final note of congratulations to Spiesy. As already mentoned, he was celebrating his 51st birthday and our 9-0 defeat was the tip of the iceberg. Later on Sunday afternoon, he played in a 3-1 loss for Haywards Heath Town Vets and on Saturday, he was sent off as Lindfield IIs lost 8-1 against AFC Acorns.

Three games. Three defeats. 20 goals conceded. One red card. Happy birthday, Steve.