For the first time in recent memory, there was actually a train service to Brighton on the day of our visit, which at least gave the opportunity for a pre-match pint or two, before the trek along the lane through the mud to the ground (much more interesting in the dark later)

Always difficult to do much of a match report from Brighton as one end of the pitch is so far away that you really have little idea what is going on half the time, and because of that the first ten minutes were largely spent trying to work out who was actually playing. It turned out that it was;
Casper
Fraser, Naylor, Marques,  Dickinson
Hughes, Delph, Douglas, Johnson
Becchio, Trundle

By the time we'd worked that out we were further confused when play stopped following a corner and everyone just stood around up the other end. About a 15 second pause before we realised we'd got a penalty. However, Becchio's body language never looked right as he was waiting to take it and he hit it straight at the keeper.

We'd actually started reasonably well and had created some nice overlaps and had a couple of corners, though it was difficult to see how close we were to getting on the end of any of them. After the penalty miss the game turned into a scrappy affair, with the most likely source of a goal coming from a defensive mistake from us. Rui let a ball bounce over his head and one of their strikers was clean through but Casper saved well, then Casper tried to dribble a backpass out of the box and failed to notice the attacker standing next to him - luckily the ball ricochet to safety.

So in a sense we were happy to be nil nil at the break. Second half started off in much the same way, scrappy stuff with just the odd flash of class from Delph to remind you it wasn't a Sunday league match. To be honest neither team looked good enough to score. Delph had one shot from outside the box which went straight at the keeper but apart from that i can't think of a decent scoring opportunity

Then on the hour a long clearance was flicked on, Trundle stuck his arse into the defender and managed to turn him and finished nicely. From then on we looked fairly comfortable, as Brighton looked unlikely to score unless we gave them one. Frazer got injured which meant that Hughes went to right-back and the Weeble came on, but with Brighton trying to push forward it did leave us plenty of space to counter-attack in.

Then from one of their corners the ball went over everyones head towards the right corner flag, it was played down the line to Delph who had sprinted out of the box. He collected the ball and accelerated away from the only defender near him and then just kept on going as no-one could catch him. Fifty yards later he found another defender on the edge of the box and i'm sure he had the pace and momentum to go round him, but he knew he didn't need to and just curled it around the defender and keeper into the top left corner. Different class.

We could have scored a couple more after that, Christie came on, was put clean through, drew the keeper and sidefooted it wide, and another cross flashed across the box with Becchio just failing to reach it. It really just left us to amuse ourselves by chanting at the female stewards sent to 'guard' us, one was rather large so a few chants about Mandy Dingle, Dawn French and Dibley were aired and to wonder whether the temporary stand was going to collapse from all the bouncing.

In the end a comfortable win but in all honesty we were very average for most of the game and i cant see much sign of improvement just yet. Still at least we managed to win a game without Beckford in the team.

Scores
Casper 7 - Good one on one save little else to do.
Frazer 6 - A few surging runs forward, managed to take the ball with him on a couple of occassions, end product disappointing.
Naylor 7 - Did nothing wrong.
Rui 6 - One clanger first half otherwise ok
Dickinson 5 - Solid enough but distribution was abysmal, sliced at least 2 into the crowd.
Hughes 6 - Slotted in Ok at RB
Douglas 6 - Ran around, got booked, usual stuff
Delph 9 - Head and shoulders above the rest, eluding tackles with ease and looking for the killer pass. Did try a spin turn drag-back at one point though with no-one near him and fell over the ball.
Johnson 5 - Kept forgetting he was playing.
Trundle 6 - Nice goal, but not always up with play, not sure why he was showboating in the corner at 1-0 either.
Becchio 6 - Crap penalty but did his fair share of work and some of Trundle's too.

Subs
Weeble 7 - Perfect situation for him, lots of space as Brighton pushed forward.

Matt