Super Sidley at their best

WHAT a difference a single result can make!

A lone 2-1 win over Southwick on Saturday consigned the misery of the previous week's successive hammerings to the dim and distant past and spawned a performance of spirit and no little skill from Sidley United on Tuesday night.

And this was engineered against "the best side we have played" so far in the view of joint manager Andy Laskey.

He said: "It was important on Tuesday night to get anything from the game to follow up Saturday's performance. It would have been no good winning on Saturday and then going and losing that one.

"The second half performance was excellent and I thought we fully deserved a point.

"I think they did take the confidence from Saturday into it. (The two centre-halves) Owen (Ball) and Woody (Lee Wood) are starting to believe in themselves and there's a little bit better belief all round. And you could see the difference a goal made to Jordan (Wood)."

The young frontman buzzed around like a man possessed after cutting in from the right and hammering home Sidley's sixth minute opener. He also popped up with their equaliser five minutes from time, applying the final touch to a flowing sequence of passes involving around half the side.

Such was Blues' rampant mode at that stage that Laskey felt "if there had been 10 minutes to go" instead of five when the goal went in "we would have won that".

But their sentiments of what might have been are probably nothing compared to those of United who struck the frame of the goal four times, had what even Laskey described as a "blatant" first half penalty turned down and were denied another seemingly certain goal by the face of United goalkeeper Greg Thurstans.

Fortune wasn't totally against them, though, because the referee's assistant, in Laskey's opinion, "missed an offside" in the immediate prelude to both the visitors' goals which were scored by Mark Warren (34) and Andy Atkin (45).

Laskey, who nevertheless accepted that a point "was a good result", concluded: "It has been a very good week for us. We've done well in both games. I think coming home made a difference. Two home games, four points and suddenly things look a little bit better."

Sidley: Thurstans, Parsons, Finch (Trickett), L. Wood, Ball, Hole, G. Morris, Watson, S. Morris, Heritage (White), J. Wood. Subs not used: Henchy, Parker-Read, Boyd.