Ten-man Clymping battle to home victory

Clymping went into the game on the back of six successive defeats and boss Dan Lawrence might have been fearing the worst when his side were reduced to ten men on the hour.

Harry Potts was red-carded for a foul and Alfold scored from the resulting penalty to make the score 3-2.

However, Clymping showed great resilience to not only stop Alfold from scoring but they netted twice more to seal all three points.

Sam Leggatt fired Clymping into the lead with an excellent 20-yard strike on 14 minutes but Alfold equalised through Daniel Hallett six minutes later.

Clymping lost defender Ian Sharpe to a nasty head injury shortly afterwards, before they went back ahead just before half-time.

Charlie Lowdell won possession off a defender before he ran through to score and the hosts then made an excellent start to the second half, with Leggatt scoring to open up a 3-1 lead.

Potts then saw red for a foul and Paul Walshe scored from the resulting penalty to bring the score back to 3-2.

Clymping switched to a 4-5-0 formation, with their wingers pushing forward, and the tactical change worked as Leggatt broke away to complete his hat-trick on 79 minutes.

With Alfold pressing forward, Clymping then got a fifth late on as Leggatt squared for Ryan Stevens to tap home.

Lawrence said: “It was a brilliant win and the effort and work-rate the boys put in was unreal.

“I think we’ve learned from the recent run we’ve been on that you can’t always play nice passing football, sometimes you have to roll your sleeves up and have a go and that’s what we did on Saturday.

“We had players playing out of position and even more so after Ian had to go off.

“Then Harry was sent off and down to ten men, we went 4-5-0 and the lads just fought for every ball and every second ball.

“They gave it their all and I was really proud of them. Hopefully this win will give us some confidence and we can get some momentum going.”

Clymping travel to bottom-of-the-table Ferring on Saturday.

The following week, Clymping entertain Rottingdean Village - with the match taking place at Littlehampton’s Sportsfield.

CLYMPING: Winter-Leonnard; Brett, Hodder, Moore, Sharpe, Stevens, Potts, Precious, Walden, Leggatt, Lowdell. Subs: Bird (Sharpe 20), Varza (Lowdell 65).

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