Fatigue-hit Horsham happy to win ugly and '˜get out of jail' against VCD Athletic

Darren Boswell nets Horsham's winner against VCD Athletic on Saturday. Picture by John Lines

The Hornets twice came from behind as first Tony Nwachukwu and then Toby House levelled up Warren Mfula goals on Saturday.

Darren Boswell then lashed home what turned out to be the winner before half-time in an untidy encounter as the Hornets climbed up to 11th in the Bostik League South Division.

Virtually all of the goals came from mistakes, but with more polished performances going without reward this season, Di Paola was happy to win ugly.

He said: “I think we were a bit tired and you can excuse it a bit. Curtis Gayler has had four or five games on the spin now while he hadn’t been playing down at Burgess Hill and Charlie Harris had not been on the bench at Eastbourne Borough.

“Mets (Steve Metcalf) even said he felt leggy and Mets is always our fittest player. So if he’s feeling tired then it shows we have been playing a lot games recently and this may have just been one too many.

“We showed a bit of character to get back into it. The first goal was awful defending, the second goal was awful defending. We got back into it and to come back in at 3-2 at half-time was well done to the boys. We had a lot of chances and I don’t think they had too many.

“There have been lot of times this year we have played ever so well and got nothing from the game. So you have to look at it and say there hasn’t been many times we have won and not deserved to win but we probably got out of jail a bit.”

VCD’s second was a mix-up at the back seeing Metcalf gifting the ball with a pass-back particularly stood out as a glaring error.

But Di Paola added: “You can’t account for some of it. Pells (Josh Pelling) has just come in, new keeper, we were having these problems when we was changing keepers as the beginning of the season.

“Brandon (Daly) was very settled but I think Biff (Joe Shelley) just thought Pells was going to take it and Pells thought Biff was going take it.”

The Horsham boss concluded: “I don’t think they were any better than us we just weren’t quite at it but they are a tough team to play against. They have a really weird way of playing.

“I think we struggled to deal with their shape a bit, but I knew that was coming but even then I couldn’t come to grips with it.”