Sun Sports v Crawley Green                     25th March 2017                            SSMLP

Battle of Crawley ends all square in six goal thriller

On a sunny but cold, windy day at the Sun Stadium the rather sparse attendance of 43 were treated to an entertaining match with goals galore in a 3-3 draw.
With the Premier league club’s on an international break, and with Sun Sports advertising on social media to any local Premier or Championship club’s fans that the Sun were at home, it was hoped some supporters might come down to Bellmountwood Avenue and take up the opportunity of watching a team that can score goals and win games!!
This however turned out to be a failed attempt at encouraging the masses to come and watch a decent game of football.
And the first goal was soon scored when Kyle Johnson beat his man and placed a perfect low curling shot beyond the Crawley Green keeper and in off the post to make it 1-0 to the boys in yellow.
But the joy was soon to be deflated and the adage came true that you are most likely to concede once you have gone a goal up as Green equalised with a power header from a corner a couple of minutes later.
After the goal Sun went on a bit of a wobble as Green took control of the game for a few minutes until George Hobson knocked a free kick into the box. The ball was headed out by the Green defence but not far enough as Tommy Walsh bravely put his head where others would fear to do so and his header found Jamie Speer who got himself comfortable with the ball before whipping in a hard cross which Kyle Johnson headed dynamically into the Green goal to put the Sun back into the lead.
Kyle Johnson was soon on the end of another fantastically placed pass and got jiggy with the ball before letting rip to curl a shot narrowly over the bar.
Crawley Green knew that they were in for a tough time but continued to press and looked very dangerous mainly on the left flank throughout the rest of the half and at half time the Sun were still in front.
Green started strong from the start of the second half and got their reward when a cross was cut back to leave Matty Evans stranded out of possession for the Bedfordshire team to tap in from six yards out to make it 2-2.
The Sun seemed a little out of sorts in all positions on Saturday, they certainly didn’t seem to be up for it as much as they did last week and Tuesday night when they were against higher placed opposition….of course it could have been that the team had worn themselves out from the previous two matches!!
With a strong wind behind them, Green decided to utilise this by getting their keeper to take the free kicks in the Crawley half and pump them high into the Sun area. The first time a successful ball was hit high into the Sun box it looked like Crawley Green could go into the lead but before the Green forward could latch on to the ball Damien Cruickshank managed to slide in from behind to hook the ball away at the right moment with a brilliant timed tackle.
With the scores level Tim O’Sullivan decided to spice things up and put on the cavalry of Andy Brennan and Dom David but as soon as they came on the Green tried to get a winner when they had three successive shots at goal – all blocked by the brave Sun defence which was followed soon after by a scrambled effort with the ball bouncing around in the Sun six yard area.
Green’s tried and tested route one passing system finally worked when the keeper’s long, wind assisted free kick found a Crawley forward whose header beat Matty Evans who came to punch the ball away but failed to reach it as the ball flew past him and into the net for the Green to complete a brilliant comeback from 2-1 down to 3-2 up.
So with time against the boys in yellow, the Sun rolled their sleeves up to make a comeback of their own. Ryan McMahon was spreading long passes around with accuracy, finding Jamie Speer on more than one occasion and with Dom David running from deep slid the ball through to him but Dom was unable to make a decent connection.
But Dom David did manage to get his chance and as he wrong-footed his marker in the area by turning him inside out, he then lashed the ball with his right foot for a change fooling the Green goalie as the ball crept in-between the keeper and the near post for it to be Sun’s turn to get an equaliser in this match.
Both sides tried to get a last gasp winner but it looked like the Sun would go closest, Dom David tried to make a carbon copy of his first goal but this time the shot was blocked.
A Kerran Lataille free kick in the closing seconds was floated dangerously close to the goal area finding Kyle Johnson who was gunning for a hat trick and although he headed the ball down well the keeper managed to keep hold of it for the teams to go in at full time with a point each.