Sussex Athletic 0–3 Wednesbury Athletic: no room for error

Sussex Athletic 0, Wednesbury Athletic 3. The scoreline does most of the talking, and for once the talking is accurate. Wednesbury are sharper, more organised and, at set pieces, borderline ruthless. Sussex are none of those things. The 13th place they occupy is beginning to look like a suggestion rather than a fact.

The opener arrives on 18 minutes. It comes from the sort of free kick that makes goalkeepers question their career choices. Davenport floats the ball in, Hermann Albertshofer meets it with purpose, and the net does the rest. Sussex start with some intent, the kind of intent that fades quickly when the opposition score first. This league punishes hesitation. Wednesbury punish it.

Seven minutes later it is 2-0. The game is effectively done. Damien Coignet whips in a cross, Ethan Coverdale rises above a static defence and heads home. Coverdale was sent off earlier this month against Wessex, which makes this a quietly redemptive afternoon for him and a thoroughly miserable one for the home back line. The whistle blows for the interval with the score at 2-0 and Sussex with nothing resembling a plan to change it.

The third goal, on 61 minutes, is the sort that arrives when one team has stopped competing and the other has simply started enjoying itself. Baltasar Lecuona feeds Josimar Brejeiro, and the forward finishes with the calm of a man who has already scored twice against Hitchin four days earlier. Three-nil. Job done. Buses moving before the final whistle.

Their previous encounter was a 1-0 affair. There is nothing that tight about this. Sussex are firmly out of sorts, while Wednesbury have a win and a little something to build on, even if the pattern remains vague. Both sides go again tomorrow, Thursday 21 August, because that is the nature of this league. For Sussex, the hope is that a night's sleep does more than a long week ever could.