SALTDEAN manager Glenn Burvill heralded his team's awesome first-half performance as simply the best

Burvill said: "The football we played in the first 35 minutes was superb. It's the best I've seen us play and I'm glad we got off to such a good start because against a strong side like Horsham YMCA that was important."

Confidence

It was revenge for a 2-1 Unijet County League defeat this season and sets them up nicely for the FA Vase fourth-round trek to Greater Manchester this Saturday to tackle Mossley.

Burvill's troops will travel up on Friday afternoon and stay overnight in a hotel. Chairman Ron Flavell has funded the preparations for what is certain to be an exciting match against the North West Trains League side.

"If we perform, it's going to take a very good side to beat us," said the Saltdean boss, whose team were presented the County League Division One Team of the Month Award for the second successive time.

Terry Cooper was one of Burvill's trump cards with another outstanding performance in midfield against YM. Cooper, like the rest of the players, are brimming with confidence and cannot wait for the Mossley clash or indeed the Sussex Senior Cup tie with league leaders Langney Sports, scheduled for early next month.

He said: "It'll be a good day out at Mossley and we certainly won't fear them. We're playing some good stuff at the moment and more than capable of coming home with a win.

"The Langney game will be a big test for us. We've still got to play them twice in the league as well, so it'll give us a chance to see how good we are.

"There's a real buzz in the changing room and the lads go into games believing they can win. We're on a roll."

YM boss John Suter admits the game was effectively over when Saltdean went three up, but was disappointed to concede a penalty shortly after pegging them back to 3-2.

"You can't give a side like Saltdean, with their impressive winning run, a three goal head start," said Suter, who is also preparing for an FA Vase clash at Totton in Hampshire.

"But we got a lifeline by scoring before halftime and when we made it 3-2 the boys were enjoying their best spell of the game. But two penalty decisions killed us off in the game; the first one to make it 3-0 and the second which made it 4-2. I thought both were unfortunate decisions, especially the first one. That was a dive."

Referee John Grant, under a verbal barrage from the Saltdean dugout throughout, pointed to the spot on 34 minutes when Steve McCall was adjudged to have felled Sean Randell. McCall maintains he made no contact.

And he was adjudged to have handled the ball with 15 minutes left to take the sting out of the visitors' fine fightback.

But the damage was done in the first seven minutes when the Tigers forged into a 2-0 lead. Randell's classy touch from an early ball into the box from Dave Stevens set him up nicely to poke the ball under keeper Jason Dumbrill.

With Horsham still licking their wounds, Stevens doubled the tally with a finish when Dumbrill fumbled a deep cross from Stewart Holmes.

Randell converted the spot kick to add insult to injury for the visitors and from 3-0 down against a side that had already won 15 on the spin it was going to take some magical to stem the flow.

Suter's men did however win themselves a lifeline a minute before half-time when McCall struck home a deflected free kick from 25 yards.

YM started brightly after the restart and, after chances went begging for Matt Russell and Peter Durrant, they got back into the tie through a 68th-minute header by Andy Price.

The visitors now looked the more likely to get a result. That was until Grant pointed to the spot for the second time to give Leighton Allen the task of firing in Saltdean's fourth.

Desperate to get back into the game, YM pushed men forward and as a consequence fell to a sucker-punch in the dying seconds when substitute Warren Bagnall converted Damion Dobbyn's slide rule pass.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.