Chichester City must recover after Dockers leave them all at sea

A hat-trick from Newhaven striker Lee Robinson put an end to Chichester City's unbeaten six-game away run in the SCFL premier division.
Chichester City / Picture by Tommy McMillanChichester City / Picture by Tommy McMillan
Chichester City / Picture by Tommy McMillan

Dave Herbert pulled one back for Miles Rutherford’s side in the 68th minute, his third in as many matches, and skipper Jack Lee added another late on.

Robinson’s three-goal haul helped him overtake Chi’s Scott Jones as the division’s top scorer.

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Chichester coach Danny Potter said: “We always knew it would be a difficult game. We’ve always had tough games against them. They’re a tough side that’s been in the league the last few years and always competed well against us.

“We let ourselves down a bit in the first half defensively. There was a mix-up between Jack Lee and Ant Ender and it did give them an opportunity to go 1-0 up, and you can’t give Robinson any chances really, he’s such a prolific goalscorer.

“He took his first chance and then just before half-time he got a header to make it 2-0 and of course our heads went down.

“At half-time we tried to give the lads a little bit of confidence. Miles tried to talk to the boys about what we should be doing. Then things went wrong in the second half because they soon went 3-0 up and for us we knew it was going to be a long day.

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“We then showed a bit of character. Why we didn’t show that at the beginning in the game we don’t know. But we got ourselves back in it with Dave Herbert scoring a good goal and then right at the end Jack Lee scored to make it 3-2 but it was probably too little too late.

“It’s easy to say that if there had been ten more minutes in the game we would have made it 3-3 but it wasn’t to be. It’s a 90-minute game not a 100-minute game.

“So we were disappointed not to defend very well and we’ve got to stop and get out of our heads that that we can out-score every team in the league because it’s proving difficult for us to do this when we play some of the better teams.

“We’ve got to go to Eastbourne Town on Saturday in the league and I hope that we’ll put the defensive errors right and start creating more chances. We’ll have Scott Jones back in the side and fingers crossed we get three points on the road again.

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“Lee Robinson is a good lad off the pitch the pitch as well. He always scores against us and we look forward to welcoming him in a couple of weeks at Oaklands on a Tuesday night in the cup and we hope he’ll have a quieter night that night.

“Dave Herbert’s looking good. He’s confident and fully match fit as well and I think in his partnership with Scott we’ve got a real force to contend with and I do think and hope that Dave and Scott will score more than Lee Robinson this year.”

IAN WORDEN

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