Common hit by Crone injury blow

Jamie Crone is out for the foreseeable future with a knee injury sustained during the 1-0 defeat away to Storrington in Sussex County Football League Division Two last weekend.

Speaking yesterday (Wednesday) evening, Common player-manager Russell Eldridge said: “He’s going back to hospital tomorrow, but the signs are not good at the moment.

“At this stage it doesn’t look like he’s going to be playing much football again this season, but we can’t really make too many assumptions until we get the results back from the scans.

“He definitely won’t be around for the next couple of weeks. He was in agony straight away; you could tell it was quite serious. The chances are he was going to get close to 30 goals in the league so it’s a blow, but we’ll have to move on.”

Fifth-placed Common, who are four points behind third-placed Eastbourne United AFC with a game in hand, are due to entertain fourth-bottom Wick on Saturday. In fact, four of Common’s next five matches are on home soil.

“Home games are going to be important,” continued Eldridge. “If we’re going to be up there, we’re going to need to pick up as many points as we can at home. But we’ll continue to take it one game at a time.

“It was a little bit of a lost opportunity last weekend. That was a game we highlighted where we were probably looking to pick up three points. What that means is now we might have to look to pick up a win in a game we might have looked to draw.

“The first half was far too open for our liking; it was a bit like a basketball match. Second half to be honest I couldn’t really have asked for too much more in the respect of effort. We did give it everything, but it was one of those days where we couldn’d find the back of the net.”