“An interesting few hours for Ryan”

Hassocks Fatboys’ second game of the Sussex Sunday Football League season was a much improved effort on the first, which admittedly was not difficult given that the previous weekend had ended with a 9-0 defeat against Queens Park.

This week, it was only a 5-3 reversal at the hands of Kingston Village and there were lots of positives to come out of it other than the fact we did not lose by a margin of nine goals.

Willow scored twice on his debut, we got to experience the excellent new 3G pitch at Ringmer for the first time, nobody was sent off for screaming “REF YOU ****ING CHEATING ****” at the top of their voice and there was another fascinating story to add to the ever growing collection of tales involving Ryan John.

Ryan arrived in Ringmer sporting a purple hand and a massive cut on his forehead which made him look like Harry Potter. It turned out that he had not taken Manchester United’s defeat to Crystal Palace the previous evening particularly well which, combined with one too many pints of strong continental lager, had resulted in him having “a wobble”.

The short of it was that Ryan punched a road sign which he did not realise was loose, it swung around and smacked him in the face. For good measure, Ryan then headbutted said road sign to show it who was boss.

An outstanding effort and one that had the layers in the SkyBet office quickly suspending the market on Ryan John red card. The incident also led to Wilkesy being an injury doubt as he had received a Chinese burn from Ryan in the scrum to try and calm him down following Roadsigngate.

A strange set of pre-match preparations were concluded with Karel revealing that he is now training to be a plumber and nearly had to miss the game as he was meant to be reading a book about pipes and toilets. Where do you even begin with that?

Nothing much happened for the opening 20 minutes of the game itself, which we were all very pleased about given that we had conspired to concede seven times in 20 second half minutes against Queens Park.

Wilkesy added some much needed pace to the defence at right back while Steve “I don’t know what happened to me last week” Spies cut a much more assured figure with Turner alongside him.

Young Daniel had feared the worst on arrival at Ringmer when he spotted that the referee was the same man who had been in the middle for Hassocks’ 3-1 County Legue defeat to Steyning Town on Tuesday night. Turner had conceded a free kick (Steyning scored from it) and a penalty (Steyning scored from it) on that occasion but thankfully, he had no cause to get involved with the official this time around.

Bert’s retirement from first team duty was going well as he was summoned from the reserves two games into the season to fill in at left back with Jake and Jack offering the sort of protection to the back four which had been sorely lacking last week.

Willow linked up play nicely between midfield and attack in the number 10 role whilst Duck and Karel ably supported Ryan up front – at least until Ryan’s morning took a turn for the worse.

The good news is that he didn’t have another “wobble” and attack an opponent (or road sign) to lead to the red card many were predicting before the game. Instead, he turned his ankle when challenging for a header and so limped off to make way for Gregggggggg who had been relegated from the reserves.

Gregg was involved in the first half’s biggest talking point when a Kingston player was knocked out after running full pelt into Gregg’s waist as both challenged for the ball.

Against any other Fatboy, the Kingston’s player’s head would have been absorbed by a layer of flab. Gregg though is carved from granite and so the unfortunate opponent hit his skull against a wall of stone and bounced off, requiring lengthy treatment. Thankfully, he was okay with Gregg receiving a yellow card for the crime of spending too much time in the gym.

Kingston were 1-0 ahead by that point after a nice move sliced through the Fatboys’ defence. They doubled their advantage shortly after the injury with a well struck goal to go into half time with a 2-0 lead.

This was the same position that we had found ourselves in at East Brighton Park. When Kingston added a third 10 minutes into the second half, the away supporters in the lovely little seated stand could have been forgiven for fearing the worst – and a repeat of last week.

Thankfully, that never materialised. Instead, it was the men in green who scored next. A well worked passing move ended with Spiesy (Lord know what he was doing up there) laying off to Willow on the edge of the area and he stroked a perfectly placed effort into the top corner to make it 3-1.

Was the comeback on? No. Straight from kick off, Kingston broke to make it 4-1 with a shot buried into the bottom corner of Scott McCarthy’s goal. Scott made some decent saves after that including one reaction stop from a close range flick.

Willow cut the deficit again from the penalty spot after Duck was kicked to the ground and the Fatboys nearly had a second penalty when Karel was brought down. It probably was a foul but Karel’s decision to “scream like Maria Sharapova” as he went to ground put the referee off awarding it.

Kingston’s fifth came about through some woeful defending from a corner with the Fatboys’ third arriving with the final kick of the game as Duck got the goal his man-of-the-match performance warranted.

Bert hit a lovely ball up the line which Duck timed his run to perfection to latch onto. Whilst the home defence were busy appealing for offside, our little feathered friend ran in on goal and slotted underneath the advancing goalkeeper with the final whistle blowing immediately after the ball hit the back of the net to round off the scoring.