PROGRAMMES FROM THE PAST

We’ll talk about a couple of games from the past which were played on more or less the same date as today’s match against Whitehawk – with the match programme issued for the match helping me.

To start with we have East Grinstead v Sidlesham on Saturday 18 March 2000 in division two of the Sussex County League. Bruce Talbot’s club notes welcome the visitors on perhaps their longest journey of the season - a team which Bruce says that “according to my maths are just two wins away from gaining promotion.”

He goes on to say that they have been top of the table for most of the season. So perhaps our away match in November when we only lost 3-2 was a good performance. However the score might have flattered us with our two goals - Steve Banks and James Hylton - both coming in the last three or four minutes.

The programme gives us three match reports with one of them about “the worst display of the season”. Our opponents Worthing United had spent an hour with 10 players after a sending off and still won 2-1. Perhaps just as well that in our next game away to Mile Oak – a fixture which “has never been a happy hunting ground for us” - we won 3-1.

Manager Bobby Smith in his notes says much the same thing about those matches, though he had missed the Mile Oak match because of a family celebration.

I’ve already told you that Sidlesham were top of the league. We were in 13th position out of the 18 teams in the league and just about keeping ourselves out of the relegation battle.

We did ourselves no favours though and Sidlesham went back home with a 5-1 win. Our goal came from Steve Banks and brought us back in the game at 2-1 – but giving away two penalties and scoring an own goal didn’t make it too hard for our visitors.

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Moving on a few years we have East Grinstead v Eastbourne United on Saturday 19 March 2011 in division one of the County League. Bruce Talbot’s notes start by telling us what a tough season our visitors were having, especially for a club that had been League champions two seasons ago - most of that winning squad having departed. However they did have ambitious development plans for their ground which might attract players in the future.

Manager Tony Beckingham says that it‘s great to be back at home as this would be our first home game for five weeks after five consecutive away matches – and later in April we would again have a run of 5 consecutive away matches!

Both he and Richard Tramontin in his notes talk about the injuries we incurred away to Hailsham. Four players had to leave the pitch and with the maximum number of subs being three we had to play the last 30 minutes with just 10 players.

A 0-0 draw in a “scrappy tussle on an awful pitch” was OK. And the match also saw Dave Tidy back in goal – five years after his previous appearance!

Eastbourne United were bottom of the league – two wins, four draws and 24 defeats – while we were doing pretty well in fifth place – and games in hand over most of the teams around us though top of the league Crawley Down, who had only been beaten once, had three games in hand over us.

In a horribly poor first half we had a nasty surprise when Eastbourne took the lead after 15 minutes and they might have had a couple more. We did pull a goal back after some 40 minutes through Peter Cooper.

After the riot act was read to the team at halftime we did re-assert ourselves with second half goals from Ashley Alexander, Marc Pelling and Rikki Cable seeing us win 4-1.

If you’ve had your memory jogged by this article then Lester Medcalf would be happy to hear from you at