LITTLEJOHN GOES BIG WITH SEVEN MINUTE HAT-TRICK TO GIVE ROBINS WIN
Can 22 minutes turn a stuttering season around? Hassocks will certainly be hoping so after they finally delivered a result that matched their performance.
Not that it looked like this day was going to be anything other than another disappointment in a season that has struggled to take off for the Robins so far.
They had trailed Loxwood 2-1 as late as the 68th minute of a clash between two of the Premier Division’s early strugglers at the Beacon. And yet 22 glorious minutes later, the hosts were walking off having won 6-2 against their visitors.
To complete a miserable day for Loxwood, they finished with 10 men after former Hassocks favourite Spencer Slaughter saw red on his first return to the Beacon since flying to the Magpies in the summer.
It was a breathless final 30 minutes to a fixture which always seems to deliver in the entertainment stakes – even if things traditionally go Loxwood’s way. This was only the Robins’ second win over their opponents in 11 attempts.
Hassocks came into the tie sitting 18th in the table with Loxwood one place better off in 17th, but league form only tells half the story.
Both have been impressive in the knockout competitions while not quite hitting those heights in the bread and butter of Premier Division football.
That’s something that Loxwood boss Alex Walsh quite rightly identified in the build up, saying that he felt both sides would begin to claim the table soon.
Walsh also claimed that, given that we are only at the start of Autumn, what happened here wouldn’t have a huge bearing on the season as a whole.
It didn’t quite feel like that in the home camp. Hassocks’ poor start has been partly due to a tough fixture list in which four of their eight games had been against sides with top five aspirations.
The Robins’ performances in those games have been good by-and-large, but this presented a real opportunity at home to lay down a marker for the rest of the campaign against a side who are on a similar level.
There was little sign of the drama that was to come in a pretty placid first half. Young Joe Bull made the most of a rare start by giving Hassocks the lead with 21 minutes played.
Bull was deployed in a more central role than he has been used in in the past by Mark Dalgleish and that left him well placed to fire a shot through a crowd of players and past Liam Matthews in the Loxwood goal for 1-0.
14 minutes later and the Magpies equalised with a real moment of quality from Callum Jenkins. The left back bent a stunning free kick up and over the Hassocks wall and into the very top left hand corner of Josh Green’s goal.
Slaughter wasn’t the only ex-Robin involved in the thick of action in the second half. It was Josh Hawkes who popped up with his first goal in Loxwood colours to give the Magpies the lead 10 minutes after the restart.
Hassocks had problems defending corners when Hawkes was captaining the club four years ago and those issues still haven’t been ironed out as he rose to direct a free header past Green.
Given their wretched form of late, that goal could have deflated the Robins. It says much about the belief and spirit among the squad though that they instead took the game by the scruff of the neck, equalising through Littlejohn’s first of the afternoon on 68 minutes as he nipped ahead of Matthews to turn home Jack Troak’s left wing cross.
That sparked the crazy final half hour. Two minutes later and the same two Hassocks players linked up again to put the hosts 3-2 ahead, a low cross this time from Troak following Andy Whittingham’s clip up the line being fired into the bottom corner by Littlejohn.
Slaughter was dismissed two minutes later for becoming involved with Troak as the momentum well and truly shifted in favour of Hassocks.
Littlejohn scored his third and the Robins’ fourth within 180 seconds of Slaughter’s early bath, an extraordinary seven minute hat-trick being some way for the forward to notch his first treble in senior football.
The final two goals came from Ben Bacon, who had been ill in the lead up to the game and was only deemed well enough for a place on the bench by Mark Dalgleish.
The striker will have been feeling much better after his introduction as he notched in the 86th and 90th minutes to complete an excellent afternoon for the Robins.
The turning point in their season? That remains to be seen. But with further winnable Premier Division games coming up against Langney Wanderers, Eastbourne United and Little Common before the end of October, they’ve at least set themselves up for a big month in the best possible way.
Hassocks: Josh Green; Harvey Blake, Arni Kublickas, Dan Jacques, Andy Whittingham; Harvey Enitcknap, Will Broomfield; Jamie Hillwood, Joe Bull, Jack Troak; James Littlejohn.
Subs: Ben Bacon, Liam Benson, Dan Stokes (used), Louis Pople, Harvey Ransome (unused).
