“I don’t want to hear any more about how fucking cold it is.”

Wilkesy asked me before the game against Hove why we haven’t had a Hassocks Fatboys match report since April.

The answer to this is that I haven’t had time. In between discovering that I am allergic to my own coat and somehow being made a director of Hassocks Football Club, there are simply not enough hours in the day to sit down and dissect what happens every Sunday morning when the men in green take to the field.

Until now. The Strictly results are not on for 45 minutes and I’m three quarters of the way through a bottle of Malbec, so what better time to bash out a first report in seven months.

The obvious place to start is what has been going on at Fatboys HQ? Well, the headline news is probably that we are down to one side. Going from top of the Premier Division at the end of March to second bottom by mid-May last season was enough of an experience to force half the first team into retirement. 

We therefore had to merge first and reserves in the summer and are operating with only one team for the first time since 2014, under the management of inspirational reserve team boss Reece who reluctantly agreed to remain at the helm.

Division Two is where we find ourselves for 2021-22, a sensible starting point halfway between the Premier Division where the first team faltered, and Division Four where the reserves finished runners up last time out. 

Some other sides in Division Two had fears about us dropping into their league from the Premier. These were quickly allayed when we lost two of our first four league matches, conceding 16 times in 180 minutes, including an 11-4 defeat to Emerald which Luke described as “the worst experience of my life”. He wasn’t wrong.

What else has happened? Jonesy has retired with a love-related injury and now spends his Sundays pumpkin picking or visiting Hampton Court Palace. And sometimes, he runs the line.

Davie has moved to Arizona to work in a bowling alley. We have a new kit which was mistakenly ordered with no shorts sized under XL, leaving Wilkesy whenever he turns up to look like Stanley Matthews.

Stuart has done something to his ankle and is out until January, not that he has told anyone about it. And Bod and Louise became parents to twin girls on November 23rd.

On November 28th, Bod did what all new fathers do and drove from Worthing to Clayton Rec for a Sussex Sunday League Division Two game of football. Reece did what all empathetic managers do and stuck Bod on the bench.

Which is where we take up the current story. Things have improved markedly since that hammering at the hands of Emerald at the end of September and victory over Hove would take us top of the table by virtue of having played more games than anyone else in the upper regions.

Hove were clearly a hardy lot as despite the fact is was -7 in Mid Sussex, they all got changed on the side of the pitch. We meanwhile were huddled around a heater in the changing room, so obsessed with the temperature that the first words of Reece’s team talk were “I don’t want to hear any more about how fucking cold it is.”

The other key message from our illustrious leader was to look after the ball, flood the box and take our chances. In true Fatboys tradition, we did absolutely none of those things in a first half which ended with the scores level at 1-1.

Hove took the lead when their absolute man mountain of a striker won a header from a long throw which looped up and in at the far post.

Mike and Alex had their work cut out at centre back against said striker and the fact he only scored twice was testament to the decent job those two did.

Parity was restored pretty quickly. We won a corner, Luke swung it over and Jordan rose like the proverbial salmon to power home an unstoppable header. 

There were countless other opportunities for us to score throughout the opening 45 minutes. Bally had quite clearly spent his Saturday night putting his Christmas tree up as he was remarkably sober, whipping in the best cross of his life which Andy’s big head put over the bar.

Ruari – oh yeah, the Mid Sussex League’s Gary Goals is now a Fatboy – was denied by a fine stop from the Hove goalkeeper. Jordan had a couple of other chances and Wilkesy was unlucky with a shot that went over the bar after he had danced through a couple of Hove tackles.

Wilkesy was rewarded for that enterprising run by being shunted out wide in an immediate change from 4-3-3 to 4-4-2 with 15 minutes of the first half remaining.

Rob from Hull moved out to the right and he soon began tormenting the Hove left back with a performance reminiscent of Stuart Elliott, who famously scored 27 goals in the Tigers’ 2004-05 League One promotion winning season.

Unfortunately, nobody was able to get on the end of any of the 10 balls Rob from Hull flashed across goal before the interval. Whilst we couldn’t take advantage of anything good Rob from Hull was doing, within a couple of minutes of the restart we did take advantage of a Hove player making a loose pass backwards which Wilkesy latched onto.

Stanley Matthews still had a lot to do but do it he did, driving forward and despatching a clinical effort into the bottom corner to make it 2-1.

An easier opportunity was fashioned for Wilkesy no more than 30 seconds later. Unsurprisingly, Rob from Hull was the architect as his low cross found Wilkesy front and centre of goal, no more than 10 yards out. 

This time, he lent back and the ball was last seen heading towards Ditchling at a rate of knots. From the sublime to the shocking in a quicker time than Davie can say: “You’re bowling on lane nine, what size shoes do you need?”

The memory of that miss did not linger for long as we soon had a third. Joe had replaced Bally at half time and Andy summoned him forward to take a long throw, which ended up working out very nicely as said throw was headed in by Andy.

Next it was Ruari’s turn to get on the score sheet with a trademark finish after some lovely approach play by Andy. From 1-1 on 47 minutes, we suddenly found ourselves 4-1 ahead before the hour mark.

Hove to their credit didn’t give up. Cheeky Ando had a couple of penalty appeals waved away by the referee who had rather brilliantly told Wilkesy off for swearing in the first half by saying “Stop fucking swearing number 6” before Hove pulled one back.

Yours truly turned a low shot around the post at full stretch after Luke decided that he fancied passing to a player in white. Alex headed the first corner over the bar with a risky yet effective clearance. Bod did the same from the next corner but there was no such luck from the third as the Hove striker stooped to head home.

That led to a period of sustained Hove pressure. The referee ignored an offside flag from Potter and whilst everyone was going berserk at that, they appeared to miss a double save from a goalkeeper defying the fact his eyes had swollen up because of that aforementioned allergic reaction to his own coat.

Reece decided that the way to get us back on the front foot was by bringing himself on and to be fair, it had the desired impact. We added a fifth after a wonderful triangle between Max and Wilkesy led Wilkesy to spoon a shot into Andy’s path who added the finishing touch.

The Fatboys Twitter account has billed it as an own goal but as Winston Churchill once said, “History will be kind to me as I intend to write it.” I’m writing this and so history decrees it was an Andy goal (for the exchange of two pints of Guinness in The Swan on Cheltenham Festival 2022 Tuesday).

There was no doubting that Andy got goal number six after a delicious pass into the box from Reece presented a tap in for the club captain to complete his second consecutive hat-trick. This whole only having three pints on a Saturday night health kick Andy is on is really making a difference.

Reece began to roll the subs after that, including a like-for-like change with Chairman Potter replacing Max. Potter got a sight of goal when a half-cleared Luke corner dropped out the sky perfectly for him to volley towards goal. It will be interesting to see how much we get billed by Mid Sussex District Council for the resulting damage to the roof of the changing rooms.

A seventh goal arrived right at the death once Reece had realised we aren’t very good without Max and re-introduced the prodigal son. Luke took a quick short corner, Max collected and rifled an unstoppable shot in at the near post. Like London Buses, we have waited nearly a year for Max to open his Fatboys account and now he has two in two.

And so it finished Fatboys 7-2 Hove. We top the table for now although the joy of winning five matches in succession is bound to be short lived.

Next week’s opponents? Emerald in the County Cup. Maybe we will keep it under 11 this time…