Pre-season Friendly
Parish Field, Westfield
Admission and Programme: None
Attendance: 60 (estimate)
Match Rating: 3
Being off work this week, I had contemplated driving a long distance to take in a new ground this evening. However, this attractive looking game was sufficiently appealing for me to stay local, with Hastings United announcing that they would be fielding their first team squad for the fixture, and Westfield always being a pleasant place to watch football at.
There have been no changes to the ground since my last visit 2 years ago, and there will most likely not be until the club moves to their new ground in the future, something that has been on the cards for several seasons but seems no closer to becoming reality. With no floodlights nor ground perimeter fencing at the Parish Field, they must content themselves with Step 7, intermediate football in the Southern Combination League Division Two during their stay at the Parish Field, in which they finished in eighth place last season. The Parish Field remains a pleasant place to watch football though, closely surrounded by tall trees on all four sides, railed along both lengths and with hard standing for the most part. Dark green portakabins are situated to one side along one of the lengths, with a windowless clubhouse bar area inside, and a tea bar window to one side. There is an air of optimism about Hastings United approaching the new season in the Isthmian League South East Division, with a young, local and talented squad playing under a good young manager in Chris Agutter. Unsurprisingly, no programme was produced for this fixture, nor perhaps more surprisingly, was any admission fee taken, maybe something of a missed opportunity to raise some much needed funds for the club.
On a mainly cloudless evening, but that was chillier than of late, Westfield put in a good performance, and the game was quite even during the first half, and it was not until the 36th minute when Hastings took the lead. A low diagonal ball into the box found the run of a striker, who took a touch before firing the ball low across the keeper and into the net. Then, right on the stroke of half time, Hastings doubled their lead. Their striker chased a ball to the right side of the penalty area, the keeper came out to meet him, and the ball was poked past him and rolled into the empty net from quite a tight angle.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the second half was a much more one-sided affair, as Westfield struggled to retain possession of the ball and had less and less energy to chase the ball. Six minutes after the break, a Hastings shot on the run forced a good finger tip save from the keeper, and on 58 minutes, Hastings scored their third, a cross from the left was met with a glanced header which went into the net past the keeper's clutches. The visitors scored their fourth four minutes later. A clever low pass found a team mate in plenty of space inside the area, and he shot the ball into the roof of the net. Hastings were awarded a penalty on 76 minutes for a trip towards the edge of the area, and was despatched into the bottom left corner, and they completed the scoring on 85 minutes when the keeper failed to get a meaningful punch to the ball following a high looping cross into the area, and the loose ball was drilled home from 12 yards.
This was quite an entertaining game to watch, and was surely a useful exercise for all concerned, in terms of getting valuable minutes into the players' legs against competitive but clean opponents, whilst Westfield should feel happy to have contained their higher grade opponents for decent portions of the game, but will be glad that they will not face opposition of such quality in their season of intermediate football to come.
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