Hassocks Fatboys reached their first ever Sussex County Cup final in 2018-19 and finished a highly credible third in Division One of the Sussex Sunday League. Not only that, but records tumbled across the season.

The firs team won the most league games in the club’s history (12), scored the most goals (72) and picked up the most points (36). Jordan Walsh also became the first player to break the 30 goal mark with his final haul of 33 setting a new club best.

Manager Scott McCarthy looks back at the season and the contribution of his players across a remarkable campaign.

Stuart Robinson
Big Bad Stu had a big impact on the season after signing in December. He managed to grab an opposition player by the throat before he’d even touched the ball on his debut as a substitute against Kingston Village and then got sent off for shaking a Unicorn player by the head in the Cup Final. There were two very important clean sheets in a windy double header against Romans and I’ve particularly enjoyed him using the line “This never happened at [ insert random Conference team ] away” whenever something typically Sunday League occurs, such as getting locked out the changing rooms at Preston Park or when he was trying to fit into a medium sized goalkeepers shirt. 

Nick Jones
Everyone’s 22-year-old favourite sailor has only played twice for the first team this season but both occasions were noteworthy. The most recent came in the final game of the campaign against AFC Reserves when he managed to go 90 minutes without getting lobbed. Not only that, but when it looked like he might get lobbed he plucked the ball out of the air like a man who’s been catching stuff all his life. Jonesy’s other appearance saw him come on against Queens Park with us winning 6-1 at the time and 20 minutes left to play. The final score? 6-5.

Jon Ballantyne
Bally has struggled in the second half of the season with sciatica, becoming the first non female under the age of 40 in the world to contract the condition. He nearly scored a worldie to take the cup final to penalties and did in fact score a goal of the season contender for the reserves with a bicycle kick from miles out. The best Bally moment of the season remains him leaning against a wall outside the changing rooms in Crawley with liquid sick pouring out of his mouth for a good two minutes as a stream of unimpressed opposition players walked out onto the pitch. He also became the first Fatboy to be sinbinned for calling a referee a “madman” in the most middle class footballing offence ever. 

Rhyan Thwaites
Thwaitesy has made just the five appearances this season but excelled in each. He’s been particularly unlucky in that three of the rare occasions he’s been available have been the County Cup quarters, semis and final when substitutions were at a premium unless enforced. Rhyan also wins the award for most drunk I’ve seen a player this year as with 24 hours until the cup final, he could be found minesweeping Magners inside Wembley Stadium shortly after he’d hit me over the head with a bottle of Budweiser.

Ananda Hoque
Ananda missed the opening months of the season with his long-running asthma problem. Why a heavy smoker continues to suffer with such breathing issue remains a mystery to me. When called upon, he put in a number of stirring performances at right back despite the fact that Duck refused to pass him the ball all year. His best performance came in the trip to Crawley, although it was nice to see the touching reunion between him and Siamese twin Kieran when we played Castle, their first meeting since being separated when Kieran got ‘stabbed’ in the summer with Ananda hugging Kieran to celebrate the goal he’d just scored against us. 

Rob Lloyd
Bert has been a revelation at full back this season, becoming one of the most dependable players in the first team. He’s played on both the right and the left and like a fine wine seems to be getting better with age (and since he decided to go full shiny bonce). His form may well have been helped by the fact he hasn’t turned up to many games drunk. In fact, the one game he was pissed at was when I’d specifically told him to drink as much as he liked at the races as he’d be on the bench the next day, only for him to have to play 90 minutes as we turned up in Crawley with only 11 men. 

Nick Davie
Davie has been the first team’s go-to man this season whenever we’ve had a shortage of players and the fact he always steps up without a murmur of complaint is what makes him one of the most valuable members of the entire squad. He made two appearances in goal this season and pulled off a couple of excellent saves, scored a genuine Goal of the Season contender from 35 yards that arrowed into the stanchion against Bison and I can’t actually recall him getting pulled up for taking a foul throw, unlike qualified referee Chris Britton. He will be sorely missed when he makes his summer transfer to the Burgess Hill Hooligan Team.

Stuart Young
Sexy Stu played for the first team in two of the first three games of the season, helping to prompt Jamie Stratton’s departure from the club as the sheep headed former manager wasn’t happy that reserve team players were being used for the front side. In an ironic twist, Stu went back to playing for the seconds immediately after Stratton had resigned. He was a dependable figure at left back, winning man-of-the-match in the opening day win over Pevensey and making his final appearance of the campaign as a substitute, coming on when we were 6-1 up against Queens Park with 20 minutes to play and ended up squeaking a 6-5 win. I’d also like to take the opportunity to thank Stuart for replying to every single text asking for availability throughout the season with a different quote from The Thick of It.

Chris Britton
Sea Bream has announced that he is retiring from playing as he wants to take his refereeing more seriously to see how high he can go. We’re expecting to see him back with us by October. He finally seemed to accept in his final season that he is a defender and not a striker, a fact borne out by the statistic that both Davie and myself scored more goals than him in 2018-19. In all seriousness, we will miss Chris next year, especially for his array of weird noises and the questionable decision making. The best example of that coming when he took a quick goal short across the box against AFC Reserves despite myself being stood out near the corner flag screaming, “CHRIS I’M NOT IN GOAL, CHRIS I’M NOT IN GOAL, CHRIS I’M NOT IN GOAL.” Somehow, the striker that Britton passed it straight to put the ball miles over the bar despite having an entire open goal to aim at.

Dan Turner
What a revelation young Daniel has proven to be since joining in November. On his debut against Castle, he said it was a one-off appearance to help us out. In every game since then he’s said he isn’t playing next Sunday, only to be there as bright as a button the following week. We had a little period where we played him in midfield until realising that the fact his main attributes involve heading and kicking a ball 80 yards up the pitch meant he was better suited to centre back. It’s that ability to leather a ball that has seen him score three genuine goal-of-the-season contenders among a frankly ludicrous haul of eight from defence. His throws have already become the stuff of legend on the Sunday League circuit and really helped build our treasured reputation as a long ball team. 

Ryan John
After a few years of on-off appearances, we finally managed to get Ryan playing regularly this season. What were the results? Well, he missed one game due to being stuck on a rail replacement bus in Camden. He threw a chair 50 yards up into the air which nearly hit a five-year-old girl against Physics. He gave away two goals against Pevensey before walking off and the pitch and subbing himself off inside an hour. And he’s turned up at various points dressed as a dad taking his kids swimming at the Triangle, a set of curtains belonging to a 90-year-old woman and the surface of a snooker table. You never know what’s going to happen next which has made playing with Ryan this season so exciting/frightening. 

Jake Philpott
Many eyebrows were raised when Jake said he was coming out of retirement in the summer and one person was even reported to have died of shock when he turned up in pre-season. We managed to get half a season out of him before he did his normal Shergar impression and disappeared, in which time he managed to get a “I can’t play, I’m moving house” excuse in and get headbutted by Tally Ho’s infamous ‘Shagger’. And when I say headbutted, I mean touch heads with Jake going down like he’s dead. 

John Humphrey
Now into his 46th year, John shows no signs of slowing down. We’ve been treated to his normal war cries of “JOHN IS UP” and “I’M 46” as well as a new addition debuted away against Castle of “THIS IS WHEN JOHN’S IN HIS ELEMENT” which seemed bold at the time as we were hanging onto a two goal lead with 10 minutes to go with plenty of scope to cock it up. Other John highlights included him scoring a tap in against Tally Ho and running to the corner celebrating by himself, scoring a worldie against Kemp Town and then refusing to celebrate because of last time and thinking he’d scored against Bison when he’d only hit the bar. He celebrated that by shouting “OI, OI, OI, OI, OI, OI COME ON” whilst walking off the pitch to hug Turner’s mum, a woman he’d never met before in his life. 

Jack Lewis
Before the first game of the season, Jack rather boldly said whilst we were putting the nets up at Clayton “I’m a changed man, I didn’t get booked once all last season.” Talk about tempting faith. Since then, he’s picked up six yellow cards, only avoided a red because it would have left us with seven players and had one referee shout at him “JACK YOU AND YOUR MOUTH ARE STARTING TO DO MY FUCKING NUT IN”. He also somehow didn’t get sent off against Pevensey despite every one of the 18 tackles he made that morning resulting in a free kick for the opposition. Discipline aside, he’s actually be good quite good and scored an excellent goal in the cup final having produced a fantastic airshot from an identical position the previous week away at Pevensey. 

Ronnie Devonish
Ronnie signed a month into the season and although he started out at left back it became pretty obvious around the turn of the year that he was the holding midfielder we’d been crying out for since Jake did his Lord Lucan act. You can count the bad games he’s had this season on one hand – or to be more precise, one finger as there has only been one. And nobody remembers it either because it was in the cup game with Pevensey and so was completely overshadowed by Ryan having to sub himself off. Ryan overshadowing Ronnie was a frequent occurrence actually as Ronnie also got sent off against Physics but seeing as he didn’t throw a chair at a child, that gets overlooked as well. 

Andy Brown
In terms of numbers, this has been one of Andy’s best seasons. He’s weighed in with 21 goals and 17 assists, both best ever hauls. He’s also produced easily the worst tackle in the club’s history when getting sent off against Castle in the cup and displayed the worst piece of acting you’ll ever see when getting ‘headbutted’ by an opposition goalkeeper after calling him a “fat cunt”. After the headbutting, Andy stuck his arms against his sides and fell backwards with a completely stiff body as if he was a plank of wood. His best moment however came when he refused to be subbed against Stanley Old Boys despite the fact him and Hayley were due to fly off on holiday because we were only winning by three goals.

Dave Linehan
Dave has set the record for most no shows this season with an astonishing 17 (or near enough). Despite that, he’s probably been one of our more consistent players and he’s added goals to his game, including a Fatboys career best haul of five in a season. Two of those have been goal of the season candidates as well, coming from 30 yards away at Castle in the league and in the 11-0 win over Bison Beer. He’s even added another positional string to his bow having played a number of games at left back where, despite the additional risk that comes with potentially losing possession as the last man, he continues to try to set world records for the number of step overs performed in a 30 second spell. 

Dave Keane
“I hear you’ve been relegated from the Premier Division. Yeah, I’m free on Sundays again now”. So went the conversation with Dave this summer and his return that conveniently came at the exact same time as he tumbled out of the top division has proven to be a roaring success. Duck has weighed in with 20 assists and 7 goals although it seems to have gone unnoticed that he hasn’t actually scored since October. He has also taken two of the worst penalties you’ll ever see including managing to smash a rebound from five yards out straight at the AFC Falmer goalkeeper who was lying on the ground. Oh, and Dave managed to achieve the seemingly impossible of being a striker in a team that won 11-0 who managed to neither score nor register an assist. Instead, his biggest contribution against Bison Beer was to take himself off at half time by saying, “I’ve just fallen over my own leg in 20 yards of space, I’m not going back out there.”

Jordan Walsh
Where to start with Jordan? He’s torn up the record books this season, becoming the first player in Fatboys history to score over 30 goals in a campaign. Castle have actively tried to sign him during three of our four games with them and he’s even managed to finish as the reserves third top scorer on five goals despite only playing twice for them. At times he’s been genuinely unstoppable, proven to be a fantastic stand in captain when Andy has been suspended and must be the leading candidate for Player’s Player this evening. He even helps takes the net down at the dreaded west end of Clayton after games. All of which must make it doubly disappointing that because brother Aaron played once, Jordan is still only the second best Walsh to play for the Fatboys this season. 

Stuart Brown
We all thought (hoped and prayed) that Stuart would be heading back to Australia before the start of this season, but clearly the land of Oz couldn’t handle such a cheery and positive personality re-entering their country and so we were treated to an entire year of him. And what a year it has been! Stuart has scored 23 times and notched 11 assists. He’s also got into shouting matches with Jordan, Big Stu, Andy (one every five minutes), Britton, myself, Duck, Turner, Jack, Bally, Dave and John. Despite that, I’ve weirdly enjoyed having Stuart back this season, especially whenever he scored and every one of his team mates looked devastated.

Jamie Wilkes
As the son-in-law of Mid Sussex football legend Steve Spies, we knew that we’d be getting a quality signing when Wilkesy put pen to paper early in the season. But he’s had an even greater impact than anyone at the Fatboys could have imagined. He was man of the match in the gritty 3-2 win with only 11 men against Crawley Cosmos which started our run to the cup final and he marked his first league start with a cracking goal from 30 yards way out on the right away at Castle. That mad Italian referee who once officiated in Serie B summed it up best though when after the Pevensey cup win he said, “That number 11, too good for you. Too good for Sunday League.” He should know given he’s probably refereed Robert Baggio’s kids or something. 

Joe Brockes
Unfortunately, having the skeletal structure of a 90-year-old finally caught up with Brockesy this season and he missed last chunks of the campaign through injury. The prospects of seeing him more regularly going forward have taken a significant blow as well with the Club’s controversial decision to remove the Cops and Robbers machine. In his limited appearances, the Goblin has provided some great moments. These include when he found himself defending a high ball as last man with the call “JOE IS UP….NO HE AINT” as the ball sailed over his head to leave a one-on-one for Stanley Old Boys. When summoned from the bench against Physics, his answer was “Nahhhh, groins gone” and his performance on cup final day of buying rounds of 18 tequilas in Molly Malone’s will live long in the memory.

Ando Knott
Cheeky Ando played four times for the first time this season, most notably in the cup quarter final win over Castle. He proved himself that day to be a good alternative to Stuart, not least because he didn’t spend the entire game stood up front doing an impressive of Victor Meldrew. One of Ando’s appearances very nearly didn’t happen during the away game with AFC Falmer after he was so hungover from Pub Golf the previous night that he asked not to come on unless we were really, really desperate. Needless to say, he ended up playing for 30 minutes in central midfield.

Ryan Collins
In a season in which we finished third and reached a cup final, Roo managed the highly impressive achievement of playing every game in pre-season and then only being available for the first and last matches of the campaign. He is however probably the only member of the first team who is fully paid up for the year, which deserves an honourable mention.