Author: Donal Barrett
The Anvils interest in this year’s FA Vase is over following a 2-1 defeat at Saltdean United on Saturday. However, they left Hill Park feeling aggrieved and frustrated after being on the wrong end of another controversial penalty decision following on from a similar calamity on Tuesday at Broadbridge Heath.

Crawley Down got off to a flying start when after 3 minutes, good work by Nick Sullivan saw him lay the ball off to Russell Malton. His deep cross was brought down skilfully by Lee Thomas who then smashed the ball across the keeper into the bottom corner. The lead however was short lived. After 8 minutes some slack defending by the visitors enabled Toby House to slot home the equaliser from close in. From there the exchanges were quite even and the teams went in level at the break.

The visitors started the second half strongly and the half was only 10 minutes old when the games pivotal moment unfolded. Crawley Down man of the match, Nick Sullivan, broke into the box and bore down on goal. Defender Rabbit Kinkene was wrong side when his attempted tackle quite clearly upended Sullivan as he was about to pull the trigger for what looked a certain goal. However, the referee inexplicably waved play on. To compound the Crawley Down sense of injustice, the Tigers broke away, the ball was played to Ben Bacon and he hit an unstoppable shot from fully 25 yards past a despairing Andy Greaves. In virtually the blink of an eye the Anvils instead of having a penalty to potentially go 2-1 up, found themselves kicking off a goal down. Crawley Down continued to play some good football and pressed forward looking for an equaliser. In the closing stages they pushed inspirational centre back Marc Pelling up front as an auxiliary attacker. Just before the end it looked as if the ploy had worked when Pelling lobbed the keeper for what looked like a deserved equaliser only to see the flag raised for offside by the assistant referee. On the overall balance of play a draw would have been a fair result. It must surely be only a matter of time before the Anvils get a rub of the green and get some reward for the level of performance they ae putting in.
Crawley Down Gatwick: Andy Greaves, Russell Malton (Connor Baston), Lee Thomas (Dan Sullivan), Sonny Barton, Billy Wraight, Marc Pelling, Josh Brown (Michael Belli), Mike Spence, Sam Cane, Oli Leslie, Nick Sullivan. Unused substitutes: Lewis Croal, Andy Goodwin.
MOM: Nick Sullivan