Saturday 19th September 2026, Kick-off 13.30
Mid Sussex League Premier Division
Recreation Ground, Cuckfield
Admission: Free
Programme: None
Attendance: 30 (rough head count)
A match report can be read by clicking here, also copied and pasted below
Match Report
Written by George Barnes
Ah, back in the Mid Sussex Prem.
When the club last played Prem football, the signing-on fee cost a tenner and match fees cost £2, or something like that, as opposed to the £25 a game and £300 signing-on fee we have now, Bally was voluntarily bald and the end-of-season do’s consisted of never-ending games of Jacks until someone passed out – none of this 2026 food malarkey, unless it was an egg yolk in the shot.
A league that once prided itself on its drinking culture now seems plagued with ex-county teams dropping down, managers with egos so big they have their own podcasts and post-game warm-down sessions.
As with most things, Mid Sussex football has changed. Long gone are the days where you’d spend 90 minutes simply avoiding getting lumps kicked out of you at Lindfield Common. Now it’s kids laughing at how poor the Rec is, moaning about how they can’t receive the ball on the half-turn or complete a ten-yard pass, whilst wearing the latest boots, grip socks, football socks with holes in, performance tracking vests, the perfect haircut and a sleeve tattoo.
Not sure what I prefer.
Anyway, we’re back and after a mixed bag of results we haven’t had a bad start, all things considered. The only game where we didn’t really deserve the outcome was our first game of the season, where we couldn’t find the back of the net. I didn’t think it was the worst performance ever, actually, until I saw they shipped in 10 goals this weekend, so perhaps it was as bad as the scoreline suggested.
Thankfully, we had a Connor and Dom back in the squad, who’d been at Charlie’s sex party the weekend before. Both Max’s were back – one had been away running a sponsored 5K and the other was a guest judge at the regional marrow-growing competition. Steve had a good enough reason to miss last week, unlike the others, as he’d been asked to perform an orchestral cover of ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’ as the bride walked down the aisle at his childhood babysitter’s wedding. Some voice on the lad.
We still had a few missing, however, with Ashton out injured (the quickest in-a-boot-to-fine-at-training-to-injured-again I’ve ever seen) and Jordan away on a work trip studying ancient and undiscovered elephant-mating techniques in the Serengeti. However, he’s returned with his findings, concluding that it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before from Connor Burke at Savannah on a Saturday evening. Shows you don’t have to go far to enjoy a true showing of alpha-male wooing techniques in their natural habitat.
Thankfully, the home of football was looking absolutely shocking, as our oppo’s, we were told, were pretty good. So it meant they couldn’t play any football. Advantage Cuckfield Town.
With Stephane and Keegan earning a deserved call-up, we shaped up with a decent side. Nothing could have prepared us for the quick start. Seriously, nothing. I don’t think any of us even completed a 10-yard pass in the warm-up and for some reason everyone was too scared to talk to each other – even the skip, who stayed sheepishly quiet every time Charlie’s ‘30th’ was brought up in the same sentence as ‘orgy’. You do the maths.
Perhaps it was Dean’s awe-inspiring team-talk that got us up for it. Murmurs around the changing room likened it to MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’, Churchill’s ‘We Shall Fight on the Beaches’ and many of Mandela’s famous speeches. I think it ended with something like, ‘Why not lead with a fucking elbow?’
Lead with an elbow we did not. Lead with a thunder-bastard we did (I did).
Learning from our frailties from last week, we decided to foot-through-it from minute one and it paid off, with Joe turning their defence and Alex running onto it and pulling it back into the danger area. Not sure what happened next, but someone completely missed the ball and Max did his best to get to it and take it off me, but my sheer pace (quickest in the squad?) got me there first.
As my left leg planted, my right leg stylishly lifted back, like Odysseus pulling back the impossible bowstring. Time stood still as my pathetic attempt from the week before flashed in my mind, where my thought process then was to guide the ball on target in the hope it could end up anywhere. Well, of course, it ended up in the keeper’s lap. ‘Good pass back, mate’ wouldn’t have even sufficed as a good enough insult; it was that feeble.
But not this time.
Just as the legendary King of Ithaca strapped the bowstring to a sound so deep it struck perilous fear into his enemies, the ball exploded from my boot, dealing a powerful blow deep in the heart of the opposition’s net.
OK, maybe not a thunder-bastard by the dictionary definition, nor does it deserve comparisons to Greek mythological legends, but it had enough on it to force the keeper into helping it on its way from about 45 yards out (edge of the box). But why let the truth get in the way of a good story?
Gossy, the cheeky little fucker, thought he’d bring up my flashy boots in the changing room before the game.
‘Gotta be good to wear those, Barnzey.’
Who’s laughing now, mate?
Anyway, our good start got better after a deep corner finally landed on a Cuckfield Town head, after the 72nd attempt this season, and it was Steve who headed it back across the six-yard box and Alex who stylishly shinned it into the back of the net.
Shrewd signing from the board, by the way – young, versatile and an eye for a goal. A bright future at this club awaits.
I don’t think anyone could quite believe we were 2-0 up, so, to make it as fair as I could, I decided to smash one into the back of our own net. Maybe Gossy was right after all.
2-1 at half-time.
Another rabble-rousing encore from Dean helped remind us how shit the opposition was, despite two young midfielders making mine and Max’s lives as difficult as possible by being pretty good at football.
I mean, it worked – up until the 85th minute, when another second ball from a corner fell in the right place, this time for one of their lads to finish well.
Riding your luck is one thing; having what I hear was a definite goal ruled out is another. But, in a remarkable stroke of bad luck, Mason’s recording of the final five minutes has somehow been ‘misplaced’. Rumour has it a tall, dark, hooded figure was seen throwing a memory stick into Lindfield Common in the early hours of Sunday morning. If you fancy a swim, you’ll either find the truth behind the goal that never was, or some really, really questionable porn.
I’m sure a few lads reading this would quite like to know what was on that stick. For one reason or another.
The only real bit of drama to follow was my somehow-escape of a booking after a pretty embarrassing reaction to being badly fouled. But what was more embarrassing was my cry to the ref that I don’t want repeated…
‘I’ve had a bad injury before, he can’t do that!’
Makes me sick thinking about it, actually. Sorry, lads.
What makes it worse is that I was hoping Max Wilcox was going to write this report after splitting MOM with me, but then I remembered that he was the only other one who heard me say this, I think, so there’s no avoiding it.
For the game itself, we even had chances to win it, both while 2-1 up and at 2-2, but that’s football. All in all, it was a good performance from everyone against a good team and another step in the right direction.
Onwards and upwards, chaps.
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