Worthing Punish K’s Errors
Normally, in a match report, you take the various elements that make up a 90 minute game of association football, construct some kind of narrative around it and you’ve got yourself a match report. However, Kingstonian’s defeat to Worthing was pretty depressing, even more so with any kind of context: the defeat to Worthing was Ks’ fourth in ten days, and leaves them with 17 points from 16, and out of the FA Cup in a season when both Merstham and Harrow Borough have made the first round. So it’s pretty bleak and in lieu of any kind of narrative, here’s a list of things that happened during Worthing’s 3-1 win at Kingsmeadow.
Six minutes in: Sam Pages gets his head to a ball over the top, but can only deflect it into the path of Reis Stanislaus who rolled it past Rob Tolfrey to give his side the lead.
For the rest of the half, both teams created chances. Tolfrey saved superbly with his legs after Stanislaus turned and shot brilliantly, and equally did well to deny Matt Axell. At the other end, Ryan Moss and Pico Gomez found pockets of space, but their seemed to repeatedly flash across the face of goal. The closest Ks came to a goal was when Youseff Bamba (YOU-SEFF BAMBA) could only head wide from close range after Bruce Hogg’s brilliant cross.
The first real action of the second half saw Pico having a goal disallowed for offside after turning in Moss’ cross. Minutes later Ks were level. SBJ’s neat backheel teed up Pico, whose cross was turned in by either Moss or a defender’s knee. Such was the variety of views that Ks warmed up for the forthcoming community referendum with a Twitter poll, which Moss is currently winning with 57% of the vote.
As both teams looked for a winner, Worthing’s quality won out, primarily Zack Newton’s quality. The substitute beat a multitude of Ks defenders, before treating Tolfrey with similar contempt, rounding him to leave the keeper sat on the floor, bewitched, as Newton rolled the ball home. Minutes later the game was over, as Harvey Sparks was afforded a heap of space on the edge of the area, to place his shot into the top corner.
Ks aren’t that good at the moment. It’s difficult to tell how bad they are though. Even over the course of these four defeats they’ve played half decent football, but there’s a few too many, ‘are we too good to go down’ conversations for anyone’s liking. There’s quality in the squad – Tolfs should frustrate enough teams and Moss should score enough goals for a comfortable mid-table finish – but that’s a couple of big ‘shoulds’. Equally, is a mid-table finish good enough? Could a community-owned Kingstonian even afford to get promoted? There are a lot more questions than answers around at the moment…
Match report by Jamie Cutteridge.
