Newland steps up to net hat-trick for Cowfold against nine-man Clymping

Under the lights at Littlehampton’s Sportsfield ground, they ran out comfortable 4-0 winners to keep up a push in the top half of the table.

Results since have seen ‘Fold drop down to sixth, but they have three games remaining, starting with a derby against Roffey on Saturday.

On Monday, Newland opened the scoring for a depleted away side in the fifth minute. Callum Nash hit a crossfield ball to Josh Barnett, a 17 year old also promoted from the reserve side, and his cross was watched by Dan Lawrence, in the Clymping goal, and Newland finished with a side foot.

Clymping played the better football for a period, in the 30th minute, however, things started to go wrong for them. The referee turned around at an inopportune moment for Clymping’s Lloyd Black, who was sent off for violent conduct after clashing with a Cowfold player.

This caused protests from the home side’s bench whereupon a Clymping coach was also dismissed. After calm was restored and the game restarted Clymping continued to look more dangerous despite their numerical disadvantage and the score remained 1-0 at the break.

With a couple of Cowfold players struggling with previous injuries and a bench light on numbers, Andy Williams asked his players to give him a few extra minutes before any changes were made.

Within three minutes of the restart, Cowfold had doubled their lead. Barnett played a great little through ball for Ben Collier and he smashed his shot into the bottom right hand corner to make it 2-0.

Just past the hour mark, Newland ended the chances of a Clymping revival. Nash’s run down the right resulted in a first time cross that left a hesitant defender wrong footed and Newland sneaked in to stab the ball home.

A minute later and bad turned to disastrous for the hosts when Jamie Wilkinson was red-carded after pulling down Nash who was clean through on goal.

It took Cowfold another eight minutes to get their fourth and for Newland to complete his hat-trick. Chris Spiers drove through the Clymping defence before pulling the ball back for Newland whose slightly scuffed shot found the net.

Cowfold: Hopkins, Millais, Lau, Hatton, Mitchell-Harris (Marshall 75), Parsons, Nash, Spiers, Newland, Barnett, Collier. Unused sub: Williams.