Ollie Lane-Smith scored a golden goal winner as Chichester triumphed 4-3 against Brighton to lift the Sussex Cup.

Battling Brighton, who have beaten Chichester in the last two finals, came from behind on three occasions before finally succumbing early into extra time at East Grinstead on Saturday.

The action was furious, with two goals being scored in the final minute of normal time including an equaliser for Brighton with just five seconds remaining.

Steve Jones, Chichester's goalkeeper and stand-in skipper, said: "It was a brilliant game. It could have gone either way but luckily for us it went our way.

"When we went 3-2 up with under a minute left, we thought we had done enough.

"Luckily for us a bit of brilliance from Ollie Lane-Smith sealed the win. It was a brilliant individual goal."

Regular captain Neil Pendle phoned Jones from his holiday base in Spain straight after the game, having missed the final due to a confusion over dates.

Jones said: "The Sussex Cup has always been a good cup but since East Grinstead pulled out four or five years ago, we have come away with some easy wins, 7-1, 5-0 or 6-0.

"With Brighton improving so much and beating us two years in a row, the Sussex Cup was one of our main goals this year. The league does come first but we really wanted to win the cup this year."

Brighton started well but failed to score from a number of early short corners. That set the tempo for the game, with Chichester's short corner routines being decisive.

Brian Lock gave Chi the lead but Dave Delea equalised before half time when he deflected in a shot from Richard Baker.

Peter Turner's short corner restored Chichester's lead in the second half, only for Simon Warringer to level again.

With four minutes to go Brighton had a chance to go ahead when the diving Paul Watson just failed to connect with Warringer's ball across the face of goal.

In the final minute Rob Pywell's short corner put Chi ahead for a third time but Brighton scored through Don Turnbull straight from the push back. That sent the match into extra time with Lane-Smith scoring from an acute angle past two defenders on the line to settle matters.

It was a difficult day for Brighton, whose late chairman Julian Potter had been buried 24 hours earlier.

Skipper Carlo Missirian said: "We said at the start we wanted to play for Julian and we wanted to walk off at the end knowing we hadn't let him down."

Crawley lifted the Sussex Plate after coming from behind to beat Mid Sussex 3-1 thanks to goals from Jerome Starkey, Steve Curd and captain Terry Higgs.

In the Veterans final, East Grinstead's Neil Longstreet waved goodbye to Sussex hockey with a goal in a 4-2 win against Lewes. Longstreet has played in the county for 20 years at most levels for Worthing and Grinstead and was county captain in the mid-80s.