“Sometimes you just have to grind it out,” was skipper Sean Pearcy’s comment after his depleted Horsham HC side edged a 1-0 victory against South Saxons in Hastings that keeps them level on points in the top three.

With only 12 players available, Horsham arrived preparing for the worst and hoping for the best on a pitch that had seen much better days. Just before half-time things deteriorated further, Ben Humpheys red-carded and having to leave the pitch, having been adjudged to have elbowed a Saxons player in the face.

Humphreys and the Horsham team will appeal, hoping for digital evidence to exonerate him. If not, Humphreys faces a minimum 16-day ban that also excludes him from training.

Faced with fielding only 10 men for 40 minutes, Horsham ‘parked the bus’, although Saxons’ attack proved pretty toothless, Crossley in the Horsham goal rarely forced into action.

Tom Smallridge on his first team debut) for Horsham away to South Saxons | Picture by Nick Evans

placeholder image — Tom Smallridge on his first team debut) for Horsham away to South Saxons | Picture by Nick Evans

With 57 minutes on the clock, on a rare Horsham foray into the Saxons’ red zone, the ball found a defender’s foot, the ball from the resulting short corner ricocheted around the D, and somehow Lee McIlwraith met a rising ball on the volley and finally found the back of the net.

Pearcy was sanguine about the outcome. "Last season all these scrappy games went against us,” he observed. “This year they’re going our way – this wasn’t a game for the purist, but it’s three more points on the table.”

It’s an interesting table with three teams on 15 points at the top. To date they have avoided meeting and won’t do so until the final three weeks before the Christmas break. That also means they won’t meet again before the final three weeks of the season in April. These will be true ‘six pointers’.

In other news, Horsham will be without overseas player Hash Assan for the remainder of the season. Having received an offer from Sittingbourne, languishing near the bottom of the South East Premier League, he has taken the option of going to play his hockey in Kent.