Acton United 1–3 Sussex Athletic: the Clavière variable

The first ridiculous minute was actually theirs. Dario Coppolaro, who has made a habit of scoring in matches that ultimately go wrong, opened the scoring at 13' with the kind of goal that makes you wonder why more of the game cannot be like that. It was tidy, and for sixty glorious seconds Acton United were a 13th-place team beating a 19th-place team, which is the sort of arrangement they have spent the year failing to enforce. Then Mateusz Kowalski equalised at 14', which is a mortifying sentence to have to write about a lead you have held for approximately one minute of football. Frieder Blumenthal assisted, because Frieder Blumenthal appears to have a standing appointment with these scorelines.

The match then entered its texture phase. André Clavière, who had scored against Pendle as recently as Tuesday, received a straight red at 33'. (1) I have no record of the offence itself, only the context, which is roughly my entire relationship with Clavière: he gives you something and then he takes it away, usually at the worst possible moment. Playing 57 minutes with ten men against a side that had forgotten how to win is nobody's idea of a restoring draw. Acton reached half-time at 1–1, which felt like a result being held together with string.

It snapped at 55'. Gruffydd Conway-Hughes scored, again off Blumenthal, and then, before Acton had finished processing the first, scored a header at 56' from Lourival Quinteiro's service. Two goals in two minutes is the footballing equivalent of a dentist saying "this'll just be a quick filling" and then producing a drill the size of a lamp. Forty-nine seconds of genuine possibility at the start, and then two separate reminders that Sussex Athletic had come to take the points.

Acton remain 13th, which on current evidence is less a table position than a holding pattern. Sussex move, gratefully, towards safety. Tomorrow is Matchday 19, because this league does not believe in letting anyone sit with a feeling for very long, which is probably for the best. There is no time to stew. There is only the next kick-off, and the quiet hope that somebody, somewhere, has taught a defender to mark Frieder Blumenthal. Apparently not by Thursday. Anyway.