Another season, another league and this time it’s the Mid Sussex Football League Division Five.
For the sake of an introduction, I’ll say that it has been another good season for us and the board are once again happy enough to keep us in the job. And now without further ado, I’ll get into the slightly finer details of the season…
First of all, an overview of the results:
A few draws creeping in as usual, but the players can’t be expected to perform to their very best every single match, especially at this level. The perfect unbeaten season blemished with just the one loss against Fletching.
The images also show that once again we won all three cups available to us and may need to invest in a larger trophy cabinet.
The Cup finals in focus:
Somerville Challenge Cup: Goals from Andy Houghton in the 5th and 33rd minute, the first a header and the second a neat near post finish put us 2-0 up. A poorly defended crossed free kick cut our lead to one. Their second goal was an excellent strike from outside the box that the keeper could do nothing about. But a goal from Antwi-Nyame from a corner and a second goal for Houghton put us firmly back in the lead. Another poorly defended diagonal cross reduced our lead once again to one to make for an interesting end to the match but we held on well.
Stubbins Challenge Cup: Scoring was opened in the 7th minute by Andy Houghton with a finish from a near post darting run and 3 minutes later the same man scored almost a carbon copy o his first goal. And that was the scoring done for the game despite there being plenty more action. We actually had slightly less possession but we were much more creative and dangerous.
Mid Sussex Junior Cup Final: The final against AFC Bolnore was easily the toughest cup final we’ve played so far, but that was until this was one. The closeness of this match certainly surprised me and arguably we actually got a bit lucky here. We had noticeably less possession and for once didn’t even have the best of the play and opportunities. However, a nicely taken early goal from Andy Houghton turned out to be enough to bring the Mid Sussex Junior Cup home for the 5th time in a row.
Some other news:
Unfortunately we lost our very promising ball winning midfielder, Marshall to Chippenham. Although the fact that he signed a deal with a £250p/w wage just shows how far above our level in terms of quality he was.
We also lost Louis Birch and David Tetteh (again) to AFC Bolnore, the thorn in our side that despite being in a lower division than us, seem to be able to lure our players away. But before they could even make an appearance for AFC Bolnore, I bought them straight back. Take that Bolnore!
End of Season Player Awards:
The top three players under the Fan’s Player Of The Season award are very much there on merit and I think the fan’s have definitely got it right. Andy Houghton broke the goal scoring record for goals in a league season previously held by Elliot Hogan going all the way back to the very first season. And not only broke it, he smashed it with 19 goals in 16 matches, and that’s just in the league, he was top scorer in most of the cup competitions too.
Mike Morall on the right wing earned his place by not only topping the assist charts but also scored many more goals than expected of a right midfielder. And although he didn’t chip in with many goals, Ben Bentley’s ability to assist from almost anywhere on the pitch created so many vital goals for us.
One player worth mentioning who missed out on the top three and any awards is striker Jayden Antwi-Nyame, who’s name I’m sure you have seen plenty from his goalscoring. He scored 14 goals in 14 games which is also brilliant and is actually the club’s all time top scorer with just over 50 goals over 4 seasons.
So that brings the Mid Sussex Football League Division 5 to a (winning) close, bring on Division 4…
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