Saturday, December 3, 2011

Sean Ray suffered his first away defeat since taking over the managerial reins at the Pilot Field, as United slumped to a heavy loss against play-off chasing Metropolitan Police at Imber Court this afternoon.

After successive road victories over Canvey Island and Tooting & Mitcham United, the U's travelled to south-west London in good spirits, buy they came up against a Met side in superb form, and were somewhat fortunate to keep the winning margin to four in the end.

Matt Whitehead cleared an early Eddie Smith effort off the line, and Lloyd Anderson's reaction save kept out a Duran Reynolds header, before the woodwork twice came to United's rescue, Carl Wilson-Denis heading against the crossbar, and Tyron Smith's free kick hitting the post.

The opening goal eventually arrived in the thirty-eighth minute, Wilson-Denis taking advantage of a misunderstanding between United skipper Josh Jirbandey and keeper Anderson to fire home, and barely two minutes later, Smith's corner picked out experienced defender Jay Lovett at the far post to double the home side's lead.

The interval introduction of new signing Billy Medlock saw the U's improve dramatically for the third quarter of the contest, the striker putting the ball in the net within ninety seconds of the restart, only for Kenny Pogue's foul on Met keeper Jamie Butler to deny the Eastbourne Borough man a debut goal.

Zac Attwood then rattled the bar with a long range free kick, as United continued to threaten a fightback, only for a pair of horrible errors by Anderson to gift the hosts with their third and fourth goals, sealing the points with a quarter of an hour remaining.

First, a fiercely struck shot by Wilson-Denis appeared to go striaght through Anderson's grasp, before a Smith corner was as good as punched into his own net by the U's custodian. Pogue and Medlock forced Butler into action late on, but the visitors were well beaten in the end, and frustration again gave way to indiscipline in the closing stages, with Jack Dixon and Ross Sutton adding to the earlier cautions for Ryan Thomson and Pogue, the combative striker collecting his fifth of the campaign, which will see him banned for the trip to Kingstonian a week before Christmas.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Metropolitan Police							Hastings United (4-3-3)
1 Jamie Butler							1 Lloyd Anderson
2 Elliot Taylor							2 Matt Whitehead
3 Chris Bourne							3 Ross Sutton
4 Sam Hurrell							4 Lee Carey
5 Jay Lovett							5 Scott Manning
6 Duran Reynolds							6 Josh Jirbandey (c)
7 Craig Brown							7 Jack Dixon
8 Tyron Smith							8 Ryan Thomson
9 Carl Wilson-Denis							9 Kenny Pogue
10 Eddie Smith							10 Joe Barham
11 Ron Edwards							11 Zac Attwood
Substitutes
12 Simon Cuthbert (for Brown 70)							12 Billy Medlock (for Barham H.T.)
14 David Bryan (for Wilson-Denis 77)							14 Nick Gonsalves (for Thomson 77)
15 Mu Maan (for Edwards 60)							15 Danny Ellis
16 Daniel Gwyther							16 Sean Ray
17 Ben Clarke							GK Matt Armstrong-Ford

Attendance: 152

Referee: Kyle Kirkbride

Assistants: Daniel Simpson & Dele Sotimirin