Beckwith Strikes Late To Give Sutton Deserved Win
- Johnnie Lowery
- Feb 26, 2017
- 3 min read
In a game that took a number of twists and turns Sutton United kept their heads to put in a solid performance and record their first away league win since the 13th August, and an important one at that.
The game was just a few minutes old when a long ball forward from the home side, playing with a strong wind behind them in the first half, caught the back pedalling Ross Worner out. He managed to prevent a goal but injured himself in the process. Though he carried on he wasn’t in good condition and after 14 minutes he was beaten by a speculative effort from Luke Young that would have probably otherwise been a comfortable save. With Simon Downer stepping in to play the remainder of the game the U’s faithful feared the worse with the wind making any long range shot a threatening effort. There were a couple of opportunities for the Gulls from set pieces, one header getting a vital touch to turn it over the bar from a corner, but no significant onslaught of pressure came and Paul Doswell’s men soon equalised through a set piece routine of their own. Roarie Deacon took a short corner and immediately received the ball back, curling his effort beautifully into the bottom corner. A slip from Dean Beckwith nearly proved costly as Nicky Bailey’s attempted clearance cannoned off a home attacker, but fortunately went wide of the posts with Downer stranded.
United must have felt they had the chance to win the game with the wind behind them in the second half, so it was a blow when just 18 seconds into the second half Brett Williams slipped in behind the Sutton defence and finished expertly to restore Torquay’s lead. The reaction was instant though and Maxime Biamou drew the U’s level only a minute later, getting on the end of Dan Spence’s cross to loop a header in off the crossbar. It was the away side who looked for the winner, with Adam May firing over from 8 yards after good work by Deacon, before the ‘magic man’ created a chance for himself and was desperately unlucky to see his effort from all of 30 yards crack off the crossbar and out for a goal kick with the keeper beaten. Torquay had a 10 minute spell where they increased the pressure slightly, but despite this failed to test Downer at any point with the Sutton defence solid. The Gulls were made to regret this lack of incisiveness when a pinpoint Nicky Bailey freekick was headed in by Dean Beckwith, sparking wild celebrations in the away end. Inevitably the home side looked to pile on the pressure in the final few minutes but Downer was untroubled as Paul Doswell’s men held on for a vital win.
And Paul Doswell, speaking to SUFCtv after the game, was delighted with the performance and result:
“Thoroughly deserved in my opinion – we’ve had a lot of bad luck away from home this year and we deserved everything we got today”
“I thought the work rate of the whole team was first class. It does help coming last night, we prepared better: we had a nice walk down the sea front this morning and everyone felt together”
“We said this is the start of a second part of the season – we’ve had a fantastic cup run and now we work on a 16 game season, we started here today and we were targeting winning half of those games”