Visitors lost their heads against Port
Holyport FC: Tempers boil over as Hunt and Shoyoye sink Panteleimon
Assistant boss Sam Lock believes St Panteleimon completely lost their heads as the game started to turn against them in the second half of Saturday’s 3-1 win for ‘little old Holyport’.
After making a reasonably solid start to the season, St Panteleimon have won just one of their last six matches, suffering heavy defeats to Reading City, Tadley Calleva and now Holyport in the process.
The visitors scored against the run of play on Saturday, but Ashley Hunt drew Derek Sweetman’s side level from the penalty spot before half-time, then netted from a long throw in shortly after the interval, while Tobi Shoyoye scored his second goal in as many games to wrap up all three points.
At this point St Panteleimon’s game plan began to unravel with two of their players sent off, another receiving time in the sinbin and their manager also receiving a red card late on. The result was already done and dusted, but the visitors’ lack of discipline enabled Port to coast through the final 10 minutes.
“We’ve been playing well for a while now, without quite picking up the points we’ve deserved,” said Lock.
“The performances have been there, and we also have a bit more steel about us than we did before.
“Teams are starting to worry about what we can throw at them. We’ve got a bit of a fear factor about us that we didn’t have before. Teams who before would think they’d come to us and just win are now thinking ‘oh no, we don’t want to go there’ which is what we want.
“On Saturday, St Panteleimon scored a very fortunate goal, but we managed to score before halftime and then went on to dominate the second half.
“To be honest with you, they completely lost their heads. When you’re paying out some of the money and have a big budget for this league, you don’t want to be going to little old Holyport, who don’t pay anyone, and lose.
“When that happens, unfortunately, some of that attitude comes out. I think they had three red cards, a sinbin and their manager and assistant manager both got a straight red. We were 3-1 up at that point so it had no bearing on the result, but they just completely lost their heads.”
Port could have scored a few more on the day, but Lock and Sweetman were happy enough with their side’s solid display which lifts them above CB Hounslow and Wokingham & Emmbrook to 16th in the table. They’ll now look to latch back onto the coattails of the teams just above them by picking up another positive result at 11th placed Reading City on Saturday. They go into it trailing 15th placed Virginia Water by three points but have a favourable fixture list in the final third of the season having now played both home and away against the top seven sides in the Combined Counties Premier Division North.
“We’re a young team with a lot of energy and there are still lots of games to play,” added Lock. “Fixtures wise we have games against teams that are in and around us in the table for most of the rest of the season.
“I think we’ve played seven of the top eight both home and away this season, so I don’t think the fixture list was too kind us on early on, but the team we have now and the way we play is completely different.
“We’ve got Reading City next week and we’ll look to have a real go at them.”