After five straight away games, the Dockers returned to Fort Road on Saturday afternoon as they hosted SCEFL Premier Division side Lydd Town in the FA Vase.

Lydd currently sit 16^th in their division, with seven points from their opening eight matches, suggesting Newhaven should have felt confident about taking a positive step on the long road to Wembley.

However, with the Docker’s absentee list seemingly growing by the week rather than shrinking, one gets the feeling that not much is likely to be straight forward this season. Not for a few months at least.

The Dockers struggled to get to grips with Lydd’s physical direct style in the early exchanges, with the visitors clearly looking to target Newhaven’s 16-year-old keeper Johnny Barnes-Galloway, who stood up well to the challenge.

It was the visitors who missed the game’s first clear-cut opportunity, one of their players skying over the bar from close-range in the 7^th minute.

Lee Robinson was then unfortunate not to give the Dockers the lead when he was slipped through following some decent football, only for his shot to crash off the angle of crossbar and post and then bounce just over the onrushing Jake Robinson.

It was then Lydd’s turn to twice miss gilt-edge opportunities to take the lead, as two free headers that really should have been scored were both missed; one going wide, the other well saved by Barnes-Galloway.

Having survived some anxious moments in the first 25-minutes, the Dockers finally started to take control. Lee Robinson was almost set through by the ever-improving Regan Clarke-Salter, but could only lob harmlessly into the hands of the Lydd keeper. Ryan Warwick was then denied by the Lydd number one following good work from Jake Robinson.

With half-time approaching, Newhaven took the lead that they probably just about deserved. Warwick’s brilliant free-kick crashed off the bar, but this time the ball did fall invitingly to Jake, who headed the Dockers in front.

Giving Newhaven’s proclivity to throw away leads shortly after scoring, it was probably something approaching a mini-miracle that not only did we make it to half-time in front, but we did so without yielding any further chances.

However, the lead didn’t last long into the second-half. Four minutes to be exact.

Just moments after Newhaven had wasted a promising situation with a sloppy final ball, Lydd punished Newhaven’s inability to fully clear a free-kick and Ronnie Dolan took full advantage, rifling an unstoppable shot into the top corner from the edge of the box.

Yet conceding the goal didn’t seem to knock Newhaven’s confidence in quite the same way as it has in previous weeks.

Within three-minutes we were back in front. Warwick’s well struck shot was pushed behind for a corner, from which Bailie Rogers rose highest to guide a brilliant header into the bottom corner.

On the hour-mark, the Dockers suffered a real blow when Warwick, who had been running the game up to that point, was taken off, hopefully as a precaution.

Within two minutes, Lydd Town had what looked like a decent appeal for a penalty waved away before Newhaven were to suffer the same fate with 15 minutes remaining. The latter was to have greater consequences for the Dockers, though, as Brad Walsh (no, not that one) was adjudged to have overstepped the mark in protesting the non-award and promptly sin-binned.

Having not looked like creating too much for most of the second half, Lydd soon spurned two very presentable opportunities to equalise. First Barnes-Galloway made a good save to tip over the bar, before a Lydd player rather kindly opted to pass the ball back to the Newhaven keeper when clean through.

The Dockers, though, also had a couple of chances to extend their lead in this period. Tom Vickers spotted the Lydd keeper off his line and almost capitalised with a lofted long-range effort that was clawed away (he tried the same trick again a few minutes later with rather less success).

With 89-minutes on the clock, Lydd were reduced to ten courtesy of the sin-bin just as Walsh was re-entering the fray (yes, 14 minutes after he left the field!).

Lee Robinson then had a half-chance to make the game safe, before with the game deep into injury time, came a moment of huge controversy which having since seen the VEO footage shows exactly why referee’s assistants should probably just stick to their job rather than try to get involved in reffing games.

A long-ball sent a Lydd Town forward through on goal, albeit he was just offside. The assistant waved his flag for what everyone watching believed was to signal the offside. Instead, he was actually flagging to inform the ref Ben Royall had pulled back the forward. While there was indeed contact, it was initiated some thirty-five yards from goal, rendering the award of a free-kick on the edge of the area something of a surprise to most people.

There was a sense of inevitability about what was going to happen next, and sure enough it did. Sammy Adams’ low free-kick somehow made it through Newhaven’s brittle wall and into the back of the net. The third time we’ve conceded an injury-time equaliser at Fort Road this season.

In the shoot-out, Lydd confidently scored all four of their kicks (including the guy who had been sin-binned five minutes earlier, which seems a little bit of a weird rule) while misses from Royall and Jake Robinson meant it was the Kent side who progressed into the next round.

Needless to say, the officials weren’t exactly popular as they made their way off the pitch, at least with one set of players, management, and fans. Baffling to say the least but hey, that’s football. We were the beneficiaries of a strange decision at Petersfield last week so… swings   and roundabouts (not that this ever makes such things easier to take).

On a side note, there was some off-field drama which I unfortunately missed due to Tweeting duties, when it seems the Lydd manager may have been sacked while the game was in progress leading to a bit of a melee on the opposing bench. The things that happen in non-league football!

We’re back in league action on Tuesday night as Eastbourne United visit Fort Road before we host Midhurst, also in the league, next Saturday.

Your support, as ever, will be much appreciated.

Come On You Dockers!

My man of the match (aka, the controversial part): Ryan Warwick. For the second time in a row, Warwick gets the nod from me. Yes, he was only on the pitch for 60-minutes, but he was absolutely bossing the midfield until his untimely departure.