Golds ease through despite injury blow

The midfielder went down within seconds of kick-off after catching his studs in the turf, which caused a lengthy delay to the early 7.15pm kick-off.

O’Callaghan was later taken to hospital and looks set for a lengthy lay-off.

Despite the early set-back, the visitors showed good character to keep their focus and George Gaskin fired them ahead with just three minutes on the clock. He latched on to a Mitchell Hand through ball and lifted it over the Crowborough goalkeeper.

The in-form Gaskin was at it again 13 minutes later, when he tucked the ball away after he had played a quick one-two with Dan Simmonds.

After the break, Crowborough hit both the post and the bar in spells of pressure, while Golds could have extended their lead but instead did exactly the same.

The third goal eventually came on 70 minutes when a good move between Hand and Mark Burgess saw a Crowborough defender turn the ball into his own net, with Gaskin waiting to complete his hat-trick.

Golds manager Mark Bennett said: “I suppose it was fairly simple to be fair as I did not think we looked like losing.

“David O’Callaghan suffered a really bad injury when the game was just 20 seconds old. He got his studs caught in the turf and his knee went one way and his body the other.

“It does not look good. They have a treatment room there and we took him to hospital after the game and it looks like ligament damage, which is not good.”

On the match itself, Bennett added: “We are not very good at keeping two-goal leads, but we came out in the second half and played really, really well.

“The RUR Cup is a really good competition and one you want to do well in, but it all depends on the draw, so we’ll take one game at a time.”