Horsham YMCA back on track as Alfold are well beaten

YM opened the scoring in the 14th minute when Jonathan Kusaka crossed from the right for Mark Pritchard-Cave to complete an excellent goal with a volley into the far right of the net from the edge of the box. A YM corner followed, ahead of Tom Tolfrey blazing over. Then came a sad incident culminating in YM veteran Dave Brown being stretchered off, subsequently hobbling on crutches to tell the County Times: “I’ve done my right knee before, and this time it didn’t sound too good – I heard it pop twice.”

After another YM corner, Aaron Jeal had to rush out of his goal to thwart a rare Alfold attack with his feet. Next, Pritchard-Cave latched onto the rebound of a Tolfrey blast, but, with YM’s second goal looking certain, the empty net was avoided. YM, though, soon doubled their lead – Tolfrey converting a penalty awarded for a trip in the box, the score remaining 2-nil at the break.

On the re-start, Kusaka went too aerial, but, just before the hour mark, Tolfrey crashed home YM’s third. Dean Lovegrove’s opportunist strike whistled past the post, and Sam Henderson was just adrift, YM sub Archie Goddard also testing the visitors’ defence. Amid vociferous, but forlorn pleading from their bench, Alfold did earn a corner, and, all too infrequently, Jeal was called into action, but only to confirm his status as one of the League’s top keepers.

This was a commanding Horsham YMCA win, happy manager Dean Carden saying: “It's always good to get a clean sheet win, and we played so much better than last week, really coming together as a team. Aaron (Jeal) had another great game and it could have been 5-nil! It was a difficult decision to take Tolf off when he was going for a hat trick, but I wanted to fulfil some other pitch time opportunities.”

On Saturday, YM head for the coast to take on Eastbourne United from the upper half of the table, before returning to Gorings Mead to host Hassocks on the 19th.