Sam Murray hit a hat-trick, there was a brace apiece for Jacob Fallaize and Ross Allen, while Fin Patterson applied the coup de grace in a resounding 8-0 victory for the Green Lions as they jumped above both their opponents and Bexhill United into eighth in the Southern Combination Premier League, with at least two games still in hand on all the sides ahead of them.
‘I wanted to say it before the game, but I didn’t, so I said it at half-time, we were sitting in 10th place in the league – OK, we’ve got some games in hand, but you’ve got to win them – we needed a statement performance and a statement win,’ said GFC manager Tony Vance.
‘It’s not going to determine the end position, but what it does is it puts us back into the conversation, because over the last few weeks we’ve dropped out of that and that’s been disappointing. A performance like that allows us to get back and people can talk about us and we can now be in a much better position in terms of our beliefs of where we want to be.
‘I thought the performance was really good. The opposition weren’t the strongest, if we’re honest, but I thought the formation and the willingness to go at them were there, and we got the rewards.
‘I think it’s fair to say we probably could have had another four or five. It was an aggressive performance, front foot, exactly what we want.’
GFC scored a good mixture of set-piece and open-play goals and produced some fine football considering the wet and windy conditions that persisted throughout the afternoon, leaving Vance a satisfied man – once he had dried out.
‘Some of the goals that got away were through some really good play – there would have been a couple of classic goals in there if we’d have got the finish. Different types of goals, ones that people will not realise, but we work on them, we work on those positions quite a lot.
‘A lot of the stuff we’ve done today has come from training during the week, and that’s what we’ve been trying to develop. The formation was designed to deliver exactly that, and that’s where it’s pleasing for us.
‘But the players were fantastic. We’ve been on the back of too many games like that, to be fair, where you can’t quite get a grip on their formation or grip on their movement, and it’s pleasing when the opposition will turn around and are saying those things about yourselves because you’ve got some things right. And I think everyone was very impactful today.’
Read a full match report in Monday’s Press
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