GFC climb one mountain but wary of midweek sting
LAST September the Green Lions crashed 3-0 on their visit to East Grinstead, so Tony Vance may see another draw from tonight’s game at the East Court ground as a successful outcome.
But, the travelling Lions will have to iron out the sloppy defensive deficiencies they exhibited in Saturday’s 3-3 draw at Faversham.
‘We gave ourselves a mountain to climb, to be honest, at 3-1 down.
‘1-0 up in the first half and looking pretty comfortable to be fair and we gave a soft goal away and another soft goal just after that, so that was poor from our point of view.
‘Then you think, “OK, we’ve got to try and get back into this game”, try and be a bit positive with the team talk, make some positive chances and then suddenly we give another poor goal away and at 3-1 it’s not looking great.
‘[It was a] great strike by Faz to get back to 3-2 and then we just really had to have a go. It was a bit open at the end, but Paris did really well to penetrate and get into that box and get a penalty and Robbie tucked it away.’
Given the less than ideal pre-season,Vance was happy with a point at the start of a long spell of successive away games due to the Footes Lane refurbishment.
‘Pleased to nick a point – they were wasting time galore and it came back to bite them. We managed to score in that injury time that they were trying to waste. That’s happened to us before, but that’s football.’
As for tonight’s game, Kez Mahon is unavailable and there will be another trip for returning defender Tom Strawbridge, who got a half-hour run out which thrilled him.
‘It was great to be back involved,’ said the central defender on social media while Vance was impressed by the Rovers man.
‘Putting "Strawbs’’ on at centre half helped us, allowed Frank [Tobin] to be really penetrative down the right-hand side and cause them some problems.’
GFC will face a Wasps side who were stung at home on opening day, going down 2-1 to Haywards Heath.
‘It’s going to be a tough game, to be honest. They have recruited fairly well, fairly aggressively,’ said the GFC boss.
SQUAD: Cal Stanton, Jordan Kelly, Frank Tobin, Harry Tobin, Jamie Dodd, Keanu Marsh, Tom Strawbridge, Thomas Dodds, Matt Loaring, Kez Mahon, Liam Mahon, Will Fazakerley, Seb Skillen, Paris Pereira, Ross Allen, Robbie Legg.
