Duncan Gardner shares his latest edition of Facts of the Match ahead of this afternoon’s league fixture against Eastbourne Borough.
Hopefully luck will be on our side in our 13th game against the team from East Sussex as we have an even W5 D2 L5 tally against “The Sports”. However we have made heavy weather of the last four meetings, with two draws and two losses. Our most recent tussle was our 11th league match this season in East Sussex when, despite taking an early lead, we succumbed to a 1-5 thrashing. On that day a left foot Kyprianou strike in the 5th minute was a false dawn as we went in at the break 1-3 down before conceding twice more in the second period. There were five different scorers that day for the hosts – Hutchinson, Hammond, Remy, Gravata & Innocent.
Looking back to the start of our relationship – our first confrontation was in the Southern league in 2003/04 under Steve Claridge when a 1-0 win was followed up later in the season with 1-2 loss away but worse was to come next season when we would not gain a single point over the pair of league fixtures in the inaugural Conference South season. We did seek revenge however in 2005/06 under Garry Hill on our promotion charge with two victories.
We would next meet in 2007 in the FA cup in East Sussex when a late flurry of goals spearheaded by Stuart Beavon sent us into Round 2. Astonishingly that was our last appearance in Round 1 proper of the cup – some 15 years ago – until this season!
In the 2008/09 Conference National season, we would meet again in league fixtures and both win our home games but then would not cross paths again until 2019, this time in the Conference South under Mark Molesley. Those games represented our last match-ups prior to this campaign with both games ending in parity – a 1-1 draw away followed by a 2-2 stalemate away. In the last game Baggie and McCarthy scored for the Terras, the latter being a direct free kick – the most recent scored by the team – some 30 months ago! In fact set pieces have proved vital recently against this opponent with 4 of the last 6 games including Weymouth penalties or free kick goals.
Several recent Terras players have featured for Eastbourne at some points in their careers and often on loan. Joshua Oyinsan, Corey Jordan, Callum Buckley, Shaun Hobson, Yemi Odubade and Jordan Rose all had spells in East Sussex and also current Weymouth midfield maestro Luke Nippard.
