CRAWLEY GREEN ADVANCE INTO SEMI-FINAL

THE SLOPE AT SHARPENHOE ROAD

Crawley Green 3 Brache Sparta Community 0

Spartan South Midlands League Division One Cup Quarter Final

No Surprises that 3rd in the table Crawley Green easily advanced in the semi-final of the competition against rock bottom Brache who are without a league win all season. Crawley Green play at the home of Southern League Barton Rovers and this was a local derby played in good spirit between two teams who obviously had good knowledge of each other. This was further confirmed when the match programme welcomed back the assistant manager of Brache Shane Scott and coach Brian Outlaw who were managers of of the reserve side for Crawley between 2006 and 2009.

The pitch at Shapenhoe Road has quite a steep incline and it was Crawley who played downhill in the first half. They controlled the game from the off taking a 1-0 lead on about 20 minutes with a wonderfully taken free-kick.

Brache played some good football but too many mis-placed passes at the crucial stage made sure they didn't have a reasonable effort on target in the first half.

Crawley looked pacey up front and took a 2 goal lead in at half-time looking confident of winning the match easily.

In the second half Brache resorted to banging long balls up front and into the left and right channels which had little effect. They did show some encouraging signs of good play and didn't appear to be bottom of the table side. I lost count how many times they were caught offside from long balls over the top in the second period.

Crawley wrapped up the game with about 20 minutes to go when a cross from the right hand side was headed into the net.



The players of Brache deserve some praise as they continued to play well and didn't let their heads drop despite being 3 goals down. The management can also be congratulated for encouraging their team throughout the 90 minutes of play. Where some managers would be berating the officials for no apparent reason it was great to see their enthusiastic approach, they deserve to get a win soon. What football is all about!!!

THE MANAGEMENT OF BRACHE SPARTA COMMUNITY FC - TOP MARKS FOR ENTHUSIASM.

Sharpenhoe Road has echoes of Southbury Road circa The Saracen's era in the mid 90's as they appear to have built a posh looking electronic scoreboard in one corner.