PeteSamson wrote:Also noticed that Alfie Cue was named on the bench for Leatherhead today for their FA Cup match, even though he wasn't used. If he is on dual registration, does that mean he is ineligible, or still eligible, to play for the Darts if he is recalled whilst we are still in the FA Cup?
I stand to be corrected, but if it is dual registration Leatherhead have a right to have him in the squad? A bit different to a loan.
I may be wrong but even though it’s dual registration as Alfie is officially our player first & formost we can request that he isn’t played in cup games if it was a possibility we may need him.
As he didnt actually play at all yesterday & hasnt played any minutes in the cup then he could still play in it for us.
On the Uckfield twitter site there is a comprehensive match report from Steve McCartney for those Darts fans who were lucky enough NOT to go yesterday !!!
Jamie Coyle's post match comments are frank , honest and fair and it was great to see that after a dire 45mins he had the " balls " to make a tactical substitute/change , something his predecessor never did , so full credit for that !!
Really , even with our 2 loanees Not playing we really should have been far too good for Uckfield but at least there is a " never give up " attitude starting to show through which can only be a bonus !!
I hope Roast was only injured and has NOT departed and how did the new loanee right back do ???????
Firstly let me say well done to Uckfield, they had clearly been punching above their weight to get this far and the final score-line does not reflect how close they came to winning and does not tell the story of the game. Good luck to them for the rest of the season.
As for us, we were absolutely diabolical for the first 45 minutes. After that, the mood was set and it was always going to be doubly hard to alter the balance of the game in the second half. Had we started with the same formation that we finished with, then I think we might have had a comfortable afternoon, however we were now facing opponents who genuinely believed they could win the game. Uckfield were fighting tooth and nail to hold on to their 1-0 lead and were inspired by the fact that they had a very real chance of victory. As time ticked away, it really seemed that we were heading out of the competition but in the end, the thing that probably saved us came down to superior fitness. You could see the home side were struggling when players started going down with cramp early in the second half. These guys had given their all but they just didn't have the legs to keep it up for the whole 90 minutes. When we finally got the equaliser their spirits were broken and they just crumbled for the remainder of the game.
No disrespect to Uckfield as they are a clearly on the way up and bigger things may lay ahead, but they are currently a tiny little club with virtually no resources. I'm not knocking them because they made every effort to make us welcome, but the truth is, their ground is not designed for large numbers of supporters and is suitable only for the players themselves and a handful of friends and relatives. In fact there are countless pub teams with better facilities than Uckfield, cripes they don't even have a toilet inside their ground!
Other than the fact we won, we should take no pleasure from this victory. This was a thoroughly horrible performance and a horrible day overall. We stood in mud being soaked by the torrential rain for two hours, cold and completely soaked, watching our team embarrass themselves before they eventually struggled to overcome an unfit team from three levels beneath them in the last few minutes. The one and ONLY positive is the victory itself.
Last edited by spike on Sun Sep 23, 2018 10:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
the duke wrote:On the Uckfield twitter site there is a comprehensive match report from Steve McCartney for those Darts fans who were lucky enough NOT to go yesterday !!!?
From the six minutes of highlights, and from someone who didn't go, of the 1st half we looked a shambles. Obviously we had fitness as a plus to grab the match, but I must admit, to celebrate the way we did seemed to be more of relief than anything else.
Think that's a bit strong there Spike, especially your view of the first half. Not sure Charlie's goal was offside & we did have a couple of other chances.
Obviously The Uckers were going to be well up for it, before fading in the second half, we didn't cover ourselves in glory but we done enough.
I think we all would have taken a 3-1 win in those conditions before the game??
M1 South wrote:Think that's a bit strong there Spike, especially your view of the first half. Not sure Charlie's goal was offside & we did have a couple of other chances.
Obviously The Uckers were going to be well up for it, before fading in the second half, we didn't cover ourselves in glory but we done enough.
I think we all would have taken a 3-1 win in those conditions before the game??
Maybe you're right. I have modified it a bit as it probably was a bit over the top which is why I usually wait a bit longer before posting. Trouble is I still hadn't warmed up and dried out when I wrote it and was still in a bad mood. To be fair, I think a lot of players put the effort in but we looked so disorganised in that first half and I genuinely can't recall a worse 45 minutes at any time in at least 10 years. The second half was much better but the mood had already been set and I maintain that were it not for Uckfield's lack of fitness, we may not have scrambled over the line. Sometimes our team can put in a good performance and not get the result but on this occasion it was the other way around. I'm usually one of the first to list the positives and have lost count of how many times on here that I've been accused of wearing rose-tinted spectacles, but on this occasion I thought we were awful.
