On paper this looks like a comfortable victory. Hythe have had a wretched time of late with only five points from the last thirty. That said they did manage a win on their last outing against Faversham.
Our 3-0 win at Hythe in mid-October further suggest this won't be a particularly close contest. However the result that day didn't truly reflect the pattern of the play. We were poor in the first half and could easily have gone at least one goal behind before a disputed penalty gave us an undeserved half time lead.
Thankfully, the second half was much improved and goals from Super Sammy and Kenny eventually made this is a comfortable victory....but it could have been very different.
So no time for complacency on Saturday. After the epic battle at Ashford it would be a shame to let some home points slip away.
You`re quite right Mick, it would be a shame after working so hard to get to this position to throw it away through complacency. Having said that,( I hope I`m not tempting fate but) I would rather have our run-in to the end, then Ramsgate`s, Ashford`s or Cray`s. So hopefully this really could be our season, if we keep our heads.
On paper this looks like a comfortable victory. Hythe have had a wretched time of late with only five points from the last thirty. That said they did manage a win on their last outing against Faversham.
Our 3-0 win at Hythe in mid-October further suggest this won't be a particularly close contest. However the result that day didn't truly reflect the pattern of the play. We were poor in the first half and could easily have gone at least one goal behind before a disputed penalty gave us an undeserved half time lead.
Thankfully, the second half was much improved and goals from Super Sammy and Kenny eventually made this is a comfortable victory....but it could have been very different.
So no time for complacency on Saturday. After the epic battle at Ashford it would be a shame to let some home points slip away.
Quite right Mick, it is wretched here down the coast what with our main sponsors disappearing into a covid mist and our big-time manager also leaving together with half of the senior players. Now we only have a few youngsters to make up the numbers, and most of them are injured, so please play nicely and be gentle. Of course by May we could be two divisions apart and that would be a shame as we will miss your constant complaining that you are far too good for this division and you will miss our never-ending doomed attempts to reach the promised land of the Premier division.
Must say that we have been impressed by your attendances though, but beware on Saturday as we have at least two car-loads of supporters coming.
Cheer up Hythe Club Man, sorry to hear about your problems .Lovely Club to visit, ever since the days when the steward used to run along the top of the stand to retrieve the ball. Presumably with Health and Safety not allowed any more. Anyway your two car loads will be given a warm welcome at the Pilot Field.
And how about the guy who used a small boat to fish the match ball out of the water Is he still in operation?.
No this was not us bookworm as the nearest water is way over an estate and the A259. I do recall other grounds where something similar happens though so you are probably thinking of one of them.
Hope a big crowd turns up on Saturday. Think we will need to win most of our remaining matches so can't afford any slip ups. U18's played well against Horsham tonight and good to see the first team players after returning from training after 9. Always seems to be an excellent team spirit within the team. Remember a rowing boat collecting the ball from the river Severn at the old Shrewsbury ground but that's a long way from Hythe!
Quite right are those who warn against complacency. We certainly do have what looks on paper to be a much better run in than some of our rivals; we have a very good squad with plenty of options, we have unprecedented crowd support, momentum and in Gary a manager who has shown already that he is competent and tactically aware. However, there is a bunch of teams two and a bit wins behind us and the likelihood is that at least one of those will put together a good run of wins up to the end of the season. My guess is that we will need nine or ten more wins to be confident of automatic promotion. That makes games like tomorrow's difficult. We've got to be sufficiently relaxed to play what has become under Gary our natural game yet not complacent or casual. No pressure !
-- Edited by GeoffM on Friday 4th of February 2022 03:12:45 PM
Firstly congratulations to Gary,father of a Hythe player who won the 50/50 with Ticket 1790, Prize £187.00. So he had a good day . Thought game pretty routine and deserved to win. It’s games like this we have to win. Could have been 5 or 6 . Certainly Sams day, 600 games,2 goals and Man of the Match .Well done to him.
Sam and Jack, two Hastings locals, our scorers Always impressed by our younger players- Marcos, James and Kane, when he came on, all looked good again Tom Chalmers excellent and Craig and Finn not overworked but always in control Ryan and Tom quietly efficient but it would have been interesting to have Andrew Sesay today.
Not sure what happened when that penalty was awarded to us as from where I was sitting the goalkeeper had the ball firmly in his hands and then Ben Pope fell into him.
At first I thought that he was going to give Hythe a free kick for a foul on their keeper, and was really surprised when the referee consulted with the linesman and awarded a penalty to us.
I was even more surprised when he booked their keeper as from what I saw didn't do anything wrong.
I wondered how other people on here saw this as if it had happened against us I wouldn't have been very happy.
Also at the end the referee didn't add on any injury time at all, when in the second half there were 6 substitutions, very strange.
Well I guess that was the comfortable victory that we sort of expected and predicted.
Once again our opponents saw plenty of the ball but only rarely came close to troubling our goal.
Don't think Louis actually had a single save to make, did he ? Our ever changing defence seems to be very reliable this season.
I felt it was all a little tame after the Battle of Ashford and with some more clinical finishing it really could and should have been five or six. However we finished the game without about six of our first choice first team so it's only right to concentrate on the positives from such a comfortable win.
I will say this though.....I thought their keeper was unlucky with the penalty. It looked like a typical Ben Pope moment with a 'no quarter given' challenge between the two. The assistant didn't initially flag for a foul by the keeper but seemed to be the person who, when consulted, persuaded the ref that it should be a penalty. A very strange incident !
The jury is still out on Tommy Cooney. Put in some decent crosses today but still quite a quiet game when I would have expected him to bust a gut to impress in front of the main stand. Don't think I have ever seen a player receive so much instruction from the bench.
Anyway... a good day overall with some of our promotion rivals coming a serious cropper !
Up in the PA Box, we thought the same as you about the penalty incident, Mick. Nothing more than a collision that Ben created all on his own by failing to avoid the keeper after the ball had been claimed.
However, others with a more straight-on view were adamant that the keeper had raised his knee to the side and deliberately caught Ben as he ran past. If that was the case, it is hard to understand how the assistant could possibly have had a better view than the referee, and even harder to understand why it wasn't a red card offence.
On the whole, the game naturally lacked the intensity of last weekend's contest, but the win was clearly deserved and the margin of victory could have been greater had we ever needed to get out of second gear. Hythe displayed a highly commendable attitude in the circumstances though, and kept trying to play decent football throughout, but lacked the cutting edge that was needed to trouble our commanding back three.
Congratulations to Sam Adams on his 600th appearance, and I make it that his two goals now take him to 148 in total. And a lovely move, with a terrific cross from James Hull, for Jack Dixon's effort.
-- Edited by Sean Adams on Saturday 5th of February 2022 08:49:25 PM
Stood right in front of Ben pope after he was subbed he claims the GK Kneed him in the side from where I was I thought it was a pen the keeper clearly left his knee in on Ben
Stood right in front of Ben pope after he was subbed he claims the GK Kneed him in the side from where I was I thought it was a pen the keeper clearly left his knee in on Ben
So the Hythe keeper was expected to stand there and be taken out by Pope's challenge was he ? That is now two games between the sides where an official has decided to make a name for himself and come up with a very debatable decision. Surely you only give a penalty if it is clear-cut and if that was the case then what was the long debate with the lino all about ? That said no complaints about the result at all and many congrats to Sam on his big day. We all have to accept refereeing decisions right or wrong but have to say that it is a worry when a guy cannot even read his own watch with any accuracy.
Regarding the penalty incident, I was just glad it did not decide the outcome, I was happy for Sam Adams to get the chance of scoring a second on his well deserved big day, but found it very hard to celebrate the goal, no, I did not think it was a foul, penalty or booking, and what was all that about with the linesman, he didn`t flag the ref. didn`t stop play for a foul, then all of a sudden we have the ref. walking over to the linesman for a chat. Felt very sorry for the goalie, who could have been sent off, what a joke, worst decision I have seen since the incident with Cray, but through out the seasons we see so many of these decisions for and against, so the next time it happens to us, we`ll have to take it on the chin. 3 points is what we needed and that`s what we got, next week might be a little more like hard work, but we must keep the momentum going and hope for a couple more of the chasing pack to falter. Great day for Sammy, not a bad gate, lots of noise from behind the goal, great days....
Hythe Club Man.....agree that you have twice been on the wrong end of two rather controversial penalty decisions in your games with us this season. Anyway, good luck for the rest of the season....and may those controversial decisions even themselves up in your matches against Ashford, Haywards Heath and Herne Bay ! 😊😊😊😊😊😊
Yes Martin, all the best for the remainder of the season, hope things get better soon for you all, and if you want to snatch a point or two off the three that Mick mentioned, please feel free to help.
At the time HU2019 you were screaming that Ben had been elbowed to the linesman, now it's a left in knee so you obviously didn't see it that clearly.
I thought it was very soft and I'd be fuming if one like that went against us. Glad it didn't have an impact on the result though, we were never not going to win that game from the first few minutes onwards and good it gave Sam another goal onwards towards 150.
looked a soft pen, but if he did leave his leg out (as he didn't look like he fancied the POPE contact) then the right decision
ref was persuaded by some sterling voices behind the goal as for hythe I thought that's the worst side I've seen play at the Pf (Worse than Whitstable)and they really lacked any belief that they could get anything from the game which i felt we started to feed into and it was a very lacklustre match but three goals and a clean sheet🙏 Two for SUPER sam 600 ill have that !!...on to the next game
Think the penalty we got at Hythe was more debatable than Saturdays but, rather strangely, it seemed the both the ref's and linesman's first reaction was not to give it. Advantage of playing towards the Wood End?
as Ian 'super sleuth' grant pointed out in this weeks podcast....the lino's name was Billy Woods....INTRIGUE ladies and gentleman😁😂 Billy Wood CEO was 'unavailable' for Saturdays game...just saying
