Crawley Green v Sun Sports                       29th March 2017                        SSMLP

Set pieces not enough as Sun lose to Green

Sun Sports travelled up to Bedfordshire on a Wednesday night to play Crawley Green and came away with nil points in another exciting clash between the sides.
The Sun team sheet was certainly different from the fixture played four days earlier with more injuries and a couple of suspensions coming into effect.
The management team of Pat Fallon, Gary Burkett and James Hall, in manager Tim O’Sullivan’s absence, had to put together a mish-mash of first teamers, reserves and under 18’s into the fray.
It was Crawley who had the first shot on target making Matty Evans get down to his left in the opening minutes.
Tom Gibson and Scott Bonner got some important tackles in as Crawley took advantage of the notorious Barton slope as they continued to hit balls high into the penalty area.
Youngsters Olamide Emiloju and John Nott, who made his first team debut, worked hard and didn’t look out of place, and the pair were back in action 24 hours later in an under 18’s match.
While up front Clement Asante and Karl Penny hassled and pushed up to put pressure on the Green defence at every opportunity.
Despite that though it was Crawley Green who went ahead when they beat the Sun’s offside trap to knock the ball past Evans.
But the boys in yellow were soon level when a Tommy Walsh free kick was curled in and met the foot of Gary Wallace who looped the ball over the Green keeper to make it 1-1.
Before half time and a carbon copy of the first goal for the Sun was “copied and pasted” to give the Sun the lead. Tommy Walsh’s free kick in virtually the same spot as previous was again floated beautifully towards the six yard area and this time Scott Bonner got up to glance his header through the Green keeper’s hands.
It was a case of Deja Vu  as half time was, like Saturday, again 2-1 to the Sun.
With the Sun facing downhill for the second half things were looking good that the Sun would come away from Bedfordshire with three points.
Alas Crawley Green were not aware of this plan and within minutes of the restart Green had equalised when an un-cleared ball in the box was smashed in by Drummett.
Now the gander was truly up as Crawley Green saw that they had the advantage and when Gary Wallace barged into Thompson the referee pointed to the spot.
Aaron Brown confidently took the spot kick to send Matty Evans the wrong way for Green to take the lead in this ding dong battle.
The Sun tried to get back into the match with Scott Bonner heading strongly from a corner straight into the keeper’s hands and Gary Wallace attempting a diving header at the back post in the next foray forward.
Tommy Walsh had another chance with a free kick which dropped just over the cross bar and Karl Penny had a couple of shots, one which was unfortunately miss hit and the other went high, wide and not so handsome.
It didn’t look like it was going to be the Sun’s night and this was finally confirmed when Scott Bonner crossed a ball over which flew over the keeper and bounced up kindly for Tom Gibson but his dramatic diving header went agonisingly over the bar.
The defeat has put the Sun back to 12th place and we will be on our travels again on Saturday with a trip to Leighton Buzzard to play Leighton Town.