Wickwar: 'The best 45 minutes we have seen from an opponent'

“The first half was the best 45 minutes we have seen from an opponent,” was Phil Wickwar’s take on a first half in which the visitors stormed into a 3-0 lead with a performance which simply blew the Robins away.

“When you look at their squad and starting line up, it’s little wonder they can give performances like that but credit to our players, they never gave up and it’s valuable experience for the four under 18s we ended the game with and the other young guys in the team.”

Hassocks do have a glut of talented youngsters coming through and they’d have done well to take something away from Evan Archibald’s performance as the Town striker netted a first half hat-trick.

The first two came inside of 10 minutes, a header from a corner after three and a nice finish on the angle after eight although there were questions about both defending and goalkeeping for that one.

It looked like a cricket score might be on the cards at that point but Hassocks changed to five across the midfield which stemmed the flow and they even created some chances of their own, the best coming when Greg Nessling was forced into tipping a Jake Lindsey curler around the post.

It was more slack marking from a corner two minutes before the break that allowed Archibald to complete his treble and Hassocks were minutes away from taking a credible 0-0 draw from the second half when Will Broomfield scored an unfortunate own goal.

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