The Green Lions suffered a 6-2 defeat on the road at Forest Row and manager Tony Vance admitted afterwards that taking an early lead through the in-form Sam Murray proved to be a false dawn for his side, as a positive start quickly turned into a bad day at the office.
‘The turning point for me was the fact that everyone got comfortable and just thought it was going to be a stroll, and how wrong they were because Forest Row deserved everything,’ Vance said.
‘They wanted to win, they showed that they were hungrier.’
Murray’s opening goal, his 20th of the season, came in the 12th minute when he was on hand to knock in a loose ball following Brandon Wallace’s cross from the left.
Frow equalised through their captain Ryan Green on 25min. and took the lead quarter-of-an-hour later when Matty Feeney-Hall beat Josh Addison in a one-on-one.
The hosts added a third before the break through George Cousins and GFC had an even bigger mountain to climb when the conceded a fourth to Cousins shortly after the turnaround.
Gil Hunter, on his full debut, was then penalised for a challenge in the box and Feeney-Hill converted from the spot to make it 5-1 before Murray pulled a goal back.
However, this time it was Cousins who completed a hat-trick to put the result beyond doubt.
‘It was not a good day,’ said Vance.
‘I’m not going to take anything away from Forest Row, they deserved to win and looked dangerous, but we were really poor – and that’s a “we”, I chuck myself in that hat.
‘There needs to be some responsibility and ownership from us all. We’ve been on a good run, but today has shown if you don’t do the basics and you don’t want to outfight your opposition and make sure you do the bog standard, ugly parts of the game more than the opposition, then you can’t deserve to win a game of football.’
The loss also meant that GFC missed the chance to make up ground on the teams above them in the table as the top two Steyning Town and Haywards Heath Town drew 1-1 while both Newhaven and Horsham YM lost.
Peacehaven & Telscombe have jumped into third thanks to their 4-1 victory over Newhaven, meaning the Green Lions have dropped a place to sixth, albeit still with games in hand on all of the top five.
GFC host AFC Varndeanians on Saturday, which is the first of four home games at Victoria Park during January.
‘We have got a few home games now, which is comfortable and easy [in terms of getting a team out], coming up, and let’s not shy away from the fact that we’ve had a really good run and done really, really well recently, but today was definitely not the standards that we want to be involved with,’ Vance said.
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