Potent Penny Punishes Physical Lewes
K’s recorded their biggest home win of the Tommy Williams era with Kingsmeadow debutant Charlie Penny netting either side of the interval. Sub Jesse Darko completed the scoring against a robust Lewes side reduced to 10 men very late on.
Penny was a nuisance throughout and when the Lewes backline hesitated in dealing with a deep Pico Gomez free-kick on 35 minutes, the on-loan striker nipped in to glance home a header from eight yards out.
Gomez had seen a header of his own cleared off the line minutes earlier after a tetchy opening period in which the visitors had three players booked. There seemed no limit to the regularity of their terrible tackling and so it was no surprise when they had Sam Crabb sent off for a second bookable offence with time almost up.
Before then K’s added two more goals to wrap up our fourth win in five league games. Gomez pounced on a loose ball in the box and drew a fine low save from Rikki Banks, but Penny was in the right place at the right time to tuck away the rebound. His work-rate, pace and clinical finishing was too much for the team from the South Coast.
He had a crucial hand to play in K’s third and final goal, too. Much of the credit must go to the tireless Dylan Casey who did brilliantly to break and keep the ball in play before finding Penny. He could have gone for goal himself – by that point hunting a home debut hat-trick - but instead the 20-year-old unselfishly teed up Darko to slot home his first goal at Kingsmeadow. It was a fine finish to an excellent K’s home performance and sets us up very nicely indeed for the visit of table-toppers Maidstone on Saturday.
Match report by Rupert Cane.
