Opening Day Joy For Excellent U's

In front of the BT Sport cameras and an impressive crowd of 3198, Sutton United overcame a new-look Leyton Orient side to go briefly top of the table due to the early kickoff time.

The recently relegated visitors looked assured in the early exchanges but never really carried a goal threat and 15 minutes in a breakaway attack saw Craig Dundas get the wrong side of his marker who proceeded to bring him down with a clumsy challenge. Referee David Rock pointed to the spot, and Jamie Collins kept his cool to send the keeper the wrong way and put U’s 1-0 up. Orient thought they had equalised minutes later when Mooney won the aerial challenge against Sutton keeper Butler to head in, but the goal was correctly ruled out for a push on the keeper. On 34 minutes the lead was doubled, a corner from the left hand side cleared out to Spence on the halfway line with the full back able to find Lafayette on the other flank. The debutant striker swung in a lovely cross which Beckwith was able to poke over the line, the defence stranded.

With this lead established at half time Paul Doswell’s men knew a similarly strong defensive performance in the second half would mean the points would be staying in Sutton. Leyton Orient struggled to break this compact defence down, their first shot on target not coming until around the 70th minute, and Butler had no trouble saving the long range effort from James Dayton. Before that U’s had had a chance to kill the game, a deep freekick running all the way through to Lafayette at the far post, though his effort on the spin flew wide of Grainger’s near post. There were few other opportunities in the game, Eastmond having the best of them when he scuffed wide from a Cadogan pullback, but the game was seen out in relative comfort with a rare opening day win for Sutton secured

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