Crawley Down Gatwick 3 Herne Bay 3: Simon Wormull - '˜We must stop the silly defensive mistakes.'

The Anvils threw away a 3-2 lead with five minutes to go and ended up giving away a penalty and being held to a 3-3 draw.

Wormull said: “An away team shouldn’t score three goals as they did. The first one Thorpy (goalkeeper Kieron Thorp) shouldn’t be letting a goal in from 40 yards. The second one should we have played offside? We have never played offside. With 13 minutes to go we went ahead with a great goal and we should have closed the game out.”

Wormull had no quibbles with either of the two penalty decisions, including the one which earnt the visitors a late draw.

He said: “ours was a stone cast penalty and I have no argument with there’s. We should have dealt with it before it got to that point! I’m not going to moan about it.

“We had a couple of players missing and it does make a difference but we had enough out there today to win.

“We showed with a couple of goals we scored we will create chances but we have just got to cut out the silly mistakes at the other end.”

Down three times took the lead and each time it was wiped out by the determined visitors, despite them playing half the match with only 10 men.

Recent signing Lee Carey put the Anvils in front in only the third minute direct from a free-kick. The ball was palmed into the top right hand corner of his own net by diving keeper Jack Delo.

Just four minutes later the Kent club were back on level terms and again in was from a free-kick, this time fired past Thorp from long-range by Sam Hasler.

Herne Bay continued to press forward with Joe Nelder heading against the crossbar and Jamie O’Connell nodding wide.

Crawley Down regained the lead in dramatic style three minutes before the break when Charlie Holness was brought down by Joe Kennett who was shown a red card for his action and Carey calmly put away from the penalty spot for his fourth goal in just six matches.

Herne Bay equalised again 11 minutes into the second half, Hasler beating Owen Roberts and setting up Dean Grant to score.

Tim Rivers looked like he had earned the three points with a well worked goal with just 13 minutes to go, completing a one-two with Trevor McCreadie.

But disaster struck in the 85th minute when Hasler ran past left back Marvin Farrell, who then brought him down and was booked before Danny Walder made it 3-3 from the penalty spot.

As Down threw men forward in search of a later winner, Herne Bay nearly grabbed it themselves in added time when substitute Danny Lawrence struck the underside of the crossbar and luckily for Down the ball bounced out.

Crawley Down Gatwick: Thorp, Roberts, Farrell, Carey, Breach, Holness, Bold (Eason 65), McCreadie, Cousins (Elson 70), Rivers, Cox.

Unused subs; Hills, Manton, Wormull

Attendance: 101

Man of the Match: Lee Carey