{"id":18177,"date":"2026-08-09T20:05:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T19:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sittingbournefc.org\/?p=18177"},"modified":"2026-08-09T20:05:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T19:05:30","slug":"match-report-afc-croydon-athletic-1-sittingbourne-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sittingbournefc.org\/?p=18177","title":{"rendered":"Match Report, AFC Croydon Athletic 1 Sittingbourne 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
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AFC Croydon Athletic 1 (Pierrick) Sittingbourne 2 ( Williams, Smith)<\/strong>
\nIsthmian League, South East Division<\/strong>
\nSaturday 8th August 2026<\/strong>
\nReport by: Mike Green<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
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Sittingbourne defied the odds and many pre-season predictions with a stunning opening day win at\u00a0much fancied\u00a0AFC Croydon\u00a0Athletic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Twice towards the back end of last season, Danny\u00a0Kedwell’s\u00a0Rams,\u00a0derailed\u00a0Reece\u00a0Prestedge\u00a0and\u00a0his Brickies \u2013 once in the League and once in the Play Offs \u2013 as they eventually lost to AFC Whyteleafe in the shoot out for promotion. And when this game came\u00a0out first of the new season\u00a0eyebrows\u00a0were raised; and when Harvey Smith\u00a0hammered\u00a0home\u00a0Bagasan\u00a0Graham’s ball six minutes into added time, a few more were raised together with the Sittingbourne toast of an unexpected opening day win\u00a0which\u00a0in the end was\u00a0fully deserved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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What an entertaining opening day contest played on an awful surface \u2013 dry,\u00a0dusty\u00a0and very uneven = both sides deserve credit for a fine game played. It was the home side who went close first as Jack Paxman was allowed to shoot wide.\u00a0Jordu Mongoy lifted the visitors first\u00a0chance\u00a0onto the roof of the net whilst at the other end, full back Finlay Marjoram had the games first\u00a0true effort\u00a0on goal\u00a0forcing\u00a0Jamie Grosshart into a low save.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Croydon went even closer moments later as Paxman clipped the bar with a rasping drive before the Brickies took the lead as\u00a0Jordan Greenidge took himself out of a play superbly as a through ball found Khavarn Williams raced onto the\u00a0pass and\u00a0colly slipped the ball under keeper Amadou Tangara and rolled the ball home to stun the\u00a0home\u00a0supporters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Paxman almost single handedly was trying to keep\u00a0Croydon\u00a0in the game and from the midfielders stunning centre neither Greg Cundle\u00a0nor\u00a0Josh Williams were able\u00a0to apply the\u00a0finishing touch\u00a0to level the scores.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Sittingbourne almost doubled their lead on the stroke of half\u00a0time,\u00a0but\u00a0Darren Foxley was magnificently denied as he looked certain to latch onto\u00a0Mongay’s\u00a0great play down the left and into the box.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The second period started\u00a0tentatively\u00a0but burst into life when Tangara shovelled a Foxley shot around the right post and Williams saw a\u00a0swerving\u00a0drive\u00a0beaten away by\u00a0Grosshart.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Sittingbourne went close twice more as Mongay’s shot was just too high and even someone of Jordan Greenidge’s giant build\u00a0couldn’t\u00a0convert Williams’ cross for\u00a0two-nil!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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And that miss appeared to be crucial moments\u00a0later\u00a0when Croydon levelled \u2013 David Bremang broke into the box\u00a0before\u00a0setting up\u00a0substitute\u00a0Brandon\u00a0Patrick, the man who dumped the Brickies out of the Play\u00a0offs\u00a0strode\u00a0onto the pass and slid the ball past a wrongfooted keeper.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Just for minute Sittingbourne wobbled, but then a silly second\u00a0challenge\u00a0from\u00a0Majoram\u00a0on\u00a0Mongoy\u00a0saw the Croydon man\u00a0dismissed for a second yellow and it really was advantage Brickies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Jean-Baptiste fisher found an “offside looking” Williams, but he couldn’t keep the shot down and the Luke Woodward was brilliantly denied by Tangara as he connected with Fischer’s great ball.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Ben Wynter could have won it for Croydon early in stoppage time but sent his free header from a Luke\u00a0O’Neil\u00a0free kick before\u00a0super sub\u00a0Smith did win it for the visitors \u2013 Skipper Bagasan Graham went on a\u00a0marauding\u00a0run through a\u00a0desperately\u00a0tired\u00a0Croydon\u00a0defence and\u00a0as the ball ran loose, Smith smashed the ball home and send the large number of travelling fans behind the goal wild with the joy of three points on opening day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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AFC CROYDON ATHETIC \u2013<\/b>\u00a0Tangara, Marjoram, Watson, O’Neill, Daniel (Patrick), Paxman (McCarthy),\u00a0Cundle\u00a0(Bremang), Dreher, Williams, Dunne (Blackman), Wynter<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Sub –\u00a0 Taylor<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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SITTINGBOURNE\u00a0\u2013<\/b>\u00a0Grosshart, Fischer, Graham, Chang (Hoyte), Peter, Reiss Greenidge, Williams\u00a0(Smith), Theobalds, Foxley (Agbebi),\u00a0Mongoy, Jordan Greenidge (Woodward)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Sub \u2013<\/b>\u00a0Salmon<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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REFEREE \u2013<\/b> Patrick\u00a0 Jolliffe
\nAtt –<\/strong> 213<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AFC Croydon Athletic 1 (Pierrick) Sittingbourne 2 ( Williams, Smith) Isthmian League, South East Division Saturday 8th August 2026 Report by: Mike Green Sittingbourne defied the odds and many pre-season predictions with a stunning opening day win at\u00a0much fancied\u00a0AFC Croydon\u00a0Athletic. Twice towards the back end of last season, Danny\u00a0Kedwell’s\u00a0Rams,\u00a0derailed\u00a0Reece\u00a0Prestedge\u00a0and\u00a0his Brickies \u2013 once in the League […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"brizy-blank-template.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sittingbournefc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sittingbournefc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sittingbournefc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sittingbournefc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sittingbournefc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18177"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sittingbournefc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18183,"href":"https:\/\/sittingbournefc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18177\/revisions\/18183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sittingbournefc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sittingbournefc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sittingbournefc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sittingbournefc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}