Crawley vs Wimbledon

[steveizy]

Hull City 0 - Crawley Town 1

Sorry for the late post. No excuses this time except the huge hang over that followed after celebrating this epic victory!

A very long but enjoyable day out started at The Half Moon and we departed at 8AM. We took a short comfort break at Peterborough services before driving on to Blyth, near Worksop. This gave us a nice long break before onward to Hull.

The KC Stadium is a rather impressive modern 25,000 seater dual-use stadium - the other tennants being Hull FC rugby league team. The pitch was in top notch condition. Very good facilities, good stewarding and a massive 1400 or so Crawley fans out of an attendance of 14,473 made for a great atmosphere before kick off and an even better one during the match.

On the pitch, Crawley were awesome. Gone was the team that seemed to have lost a bit of direction recently. All of our boys were well up for this one and very focussed. Our new loan signing Sanchez Watt from Arsenal slotted into the team beautifully and made some very good contributions on his debut after meeting the team only a day or so before. Scott Shearer was exceptional in goal. I could go through the whole team - every one of them played a blinder!

From the whistle we succeeded in putting them under pressure whilst also denying them possession and it worked. For the first half hour or so The Tigers had no attempts on our goal whilst The Reds had four or five and a few corners. They got a bit stronger towards the end of the first half and Shearer was called on to make a couple of good saves. Barnett had another shot saved by their keeper just before half time. HT 0-0.

The second half saw The Tigers coming into the game a bit more but it was still mainly Crawley with several attempts on goal. In the 56th minute Tubbs ran onto a beautiful long pass on from Sergio Torres and beating their offside trap... Matt took his time and slotted the ball under their advancing keeper. Hull 0 - Crawley 1.

All of us 1400 or so Crawley fans went wild with excitement and our singing went up by a few more decibels Terrific atmosphere!

But with over half an hour to go anything can happen in football so there was quite a bit of tension too and a few of us were thinking of Plymouth last week where a late goal denied us a win...We carried on pushing them though they did have a few attempts and Shearer was really tested on a couple of occasions. But the balance was still in Crawley's favour with Sanchez Watt unlucky twice in quick succession - the first being saved and the second being off the post after a Tyrone Barnet shot had been blocked. We contained them, with a few nail-biting moments, for the rest of the match and were still more of a threat to them than them to us.

Absolutely fantastic result. All of our boys did a good job

The long journey home to Crawley was made a lot easier by the jubilant mood on the coach with a lot of speculation over who our next opponents would be in the 5th round! I don't think anyone mentioned being at home to Stoke!

Yes! After the draw on Sunday, Stoke City - last year's finalists come to Broadfield on the weekend of the 18/19 February as the first Premier League club to play there competitively ... this will be a sellout and could well be a TV match!

Last year Manchester United... this year Stoke. It is possible for our super team to win this at "Fortress Broadfield" and advance even further in the FA Cup! What an upset that would be!

Next week we come back to League football as we face Bradford away at Bradford. I'm going on the coach with Carol for another long away journey... something like 1700 miles in the last few weeks. Should be a good game and Crawley will be keen to keep near to the top of the table whilst Bradford are trying to claw their way out of the danger zone at the bottom of the table. We will have to do without Matt Tubbs though We have sold him today to Bournemouth for an undisclosed sum - believed to be circa 900K. This - for a fan is devastating news, although we all understand the reasons. We just hope that Evans brings in a replacement before the closure of the transfer window, though stepping into Matt's boots will be a tough act to follow. Thanks for everything Matt, you always gave us 110%. You will always be a legend at Crawley and good luck at Bournemouth

Interesting times being a supporter

COME ON YOU REDS!

[steveizy]

CRAWLEY Vs STOKE CITY

Crawley Town has announced ticket and game details for the biggest ever match to take place at The Broadfield.

Season ticket holders first day, then CTSA members next, then on Sunday 5th Feb tickets go on general sale. Such is the demand that this is strictly one ticket per person and no phone applications are being taken. Don't leave it if you want a ticket. This is a sellout before a ticket is sold and there are going to be some disappointed.

The match takes place on Sunday 19th February and kicks-off at 12:00.

http://www.crawleytownfc.com/page/Lates ... 79,00.html for more details.

Could we cause one of the biggest cup upsets ever? I think our boys could pull this off

COME ON YOU REDS!

[steveizy]

Bradford P - Crawley P Match postponed due to frozen pitch.

Bradford groundsmen were confident that the match would go ahead - but despite their pitch covers and warm fans blowing all-night they were unable to combat some of the lowest temperatures this year and the referee declared the pitch unfit at about 11:00.

We were only about 20 minutes away from our planned stop at The Miners Arms in Tankersley South Yorks so we continued and had a very nice buffet and beer. We left about 1:15pm, just as snow was beginning to fall and arrived back in Crawley at 6:30... 20 minutes later it was snowing heavily. Looks like the weather followed us down the M1. Glad we avoided being stranded on the coach although a few of us could happily have been stranded in the pub

Only one League 2 match took place - Plymouth vs Southend which ended in a 2-2 draw. We are still in 4th place but have a game, or two, in hand over the three above us.

Although the main reason for our trip was cancelled, we all had a great day out

[dub]

It's good to know that you guys and a great day out especially after travelling all that way and more importantly you all got home safely before the really bad weather hit.
Shame about the match
Roll on the the summer

COME ON YOU REDS!

[steveizy]

It's good to know that you guys and a great day out especially after travelling all that way and more importantly you all got home safely before the really bad weather hit.
Shame about the match
Roll on the the summer

COME ON YOU REDS!

Yep, the decision to leave the pub when we did was a good one. Fortunately, our coach travel is insured against this sort of thing and nobody will be out of pocket - except the insurance company.

A long way to travel to a pub for a Saturday drink but as I said all great fun!

The main problem for the club will be fixture congestion towards the end of the season and if we beat Stoke in the FA Cup, this will be even worse as league games will have to be re-arranged. Our home match this Tuesday against Cheltenham is also in doubt.

Yes - roll on summer!

[steveizy]

Crawley 4 Cheltenham 2

Great result for Tubbs-less Crawley especially after the work put in by fans to clear the pitch of snow in the days leading up to this match. Our new signings all made brilliant appearances with Sanchez Watt scoring twice on his home debut.

Unfortunately this was the first home match that I have missed this season. I haven't been that great this week ...man-flu probably, but that and being bent over double after a stint of plastering left me feeling totally unable to go. A triple whammy for me. I was keen to see our new signings in action and it seems that they all played very well, Cheltenham were top of the table and I hate missing football I had to settle for live commentary from the Reds Player instead.

Cheltenham took an early lead against the run of play when in the 4th minute their Luke Garbutt hit a low ball into the bottom of our net from outside the penalty area. We weren't behind for long though - in the 12th minute Sanchez Watt got the equaliser and his first Crawley goal with a long drive from outside the area. By all accounts this goal was class Then, in the 14th minute Barnett was on hand to hit another long one into the top of the goal. Class again! in the 39th minute Barnett was on hand again to hit another one from the edge of the box again into the top of the goal HT 3-1

The second half started with Crawley in control again and Cheltenham adopted the risky strategy of using all three of their substitutions at around the hour mark. It didn't help though as Sanchez Watt hit his second from close-in just after that, in the 64th minute 4-1 with 25 minutes to go is a winning score but Cheltenham weren't having any of that and 10 minutes later their Darryl Duffy got a consolation goal from close range. 4-2 with 15 minutes to go! But we held on!

Karl Hawley was brought on as a substitute for fellow débutante Billy Clarke in the 86th minute and, by all accounts, put in a good show for his first few minutes of action in a Crawley shirt. Final whistle 4-2.

Great result for The Reds and puts us back at the top of the table on goal difference over Cheltenham but we still have a game in hand.

Hopefully by Saturday I will have recovered from this dreadful illness and am looking forward to our next home match against 18th place Aldershot which kicks off at 3:00pm. We played them earlier, away, in the season and won by a single goal. Unless yesterday's match was a one-off, I cannot see anything other than a Crawley win but anything can happen in football.
COME ON YOU REDS!

[steveizy]

Crawley P - Aldershot P

Sorry folks with Crawley touching -12 degrees overnight, it didn't really stand a chance

Hoping that our game away at Swindon on Tuesday evening goes ahead... starting to get "football withdrawal symptoms" !!

COME ON YOU REDS!

[dub]

Crawley P - Aldershot P

Sorry folks with Crawley touching -12 degrees overnight, it didn't really stand a chance

Hoping that our game away at Swindon on Tuesday evening goes ahead... starting to get "football withdrawal symptoms" !!

COME ON YOU REDS!

Lets hope the break doesn't break the squads stride (this unscheduled downtime) and they come back stronger.
Will have to source some good footy games for the arcade to help with your withdrawal symptoms at times like these.
Even Bigger challenges ahead, for instance Stoke on the 19th of Feb I bet you guys are all fired up for the match.
Happy Days

[steveizy]

Swindon 3 - Crawley 0

Sometimes it is hard to sit down and write about something, particularly when it's not pleasant. This is one of those times.

After a bright start, Crawley were outplayed by a very strong Swindon team. That's it. There isn't much to add except that the Crawley side did not bear any resemblance to the team that beat Cheltenham the week before despite only one change. Scott Shearer was left out, injured, and Kuipers replaced him in goal. Kuipers looked rusty, having not played first team football since our home defeat to Swindon back in September. But it wasn't only Kuipers - the whole team seemed lacking in all departments and Swindon were very good. Enough said.

Crawley now drop to fifth place in league 2 behind Swindon on goal difference but both Crawley and Swindon have two games in hand over the top three and are only a point adrift so there will be plenty of changes in the top places. Crawley, of course, will miss another league game this weekend as we are playing the FA Cup match against Stoke on Sunday while all the other teams are playing so Crawley will probably find themselves in sixth place on Saturday evening.

Next- up in the league is at home to Morecambe on Wednesday 22nd February. We will be keen to win this match, preferably convincingly, so as to get revenge for the 6-0 tonking they gave us at Morecambe last year!

But before that all eyes are on our biggest match ever to be staged at Broadfield when we entertain Premier League Stoke City in the 5th round of the FA Cup. This is a sellout and will be the biggest gate at Broadfield so far. Stoke suffered a defeat on Thursday to Valencia but they will probably play a completely different side against us. We can win this but it will be tough and it really depends on Crawley raising their game. Win or lose, it will be a great occasion!
COME ON YOU REDS!

[wired]

Come on Crawley