CHICKERELL UNITED 1

DORCHESTER SPORTS RES 3

CHICKERELL United suffered their first defeat of their Dorset Senior League campaign on Saturday but, after the injury sustained to Joe Charles, boss Steve Coward labelled the scoreline as “irrelevant”.

Charles, who suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury while at Bridport in 2012, was involved in another unfortunate injury during the Chickens 3-1 loss against Dorchester Sports Reserves.

Going in for what Coward described as a “50-50” challenge, Charles was left needing to go to hospital with ligament damage to his knee once more and was awaiting a full verdict yesterday.

Speaking about the incident, Coward told Echosport: “Football goes out the window when you see Joe going off to hospital with probably his football career over.

“He went in for a 50-50 which was a real cruncher. His knee just gave way and he has done a lot of ligament damage.

“I know on Saturday night he was on morphine and they were just trying to keep him calm.

“It was just impact, both lads went in to win the ball and there was no malice in it.

“You don’t want to see anyone at amateur level get hurt.

“The club feel for Joe and wish him as quick a recovery as possible.”

He added: “To put it in perspective, the result is irrelevant for me when you see a lad injured like that at amateur level.

“It’s probably going to affect his work and I doubt you will see him on a football pitch again.

“None of us are five star players who are getting paid. We just do it for a bit of fun and it’s our hobby.”

In the game itself, Sports took the lead on seven minutes. Jamie West unselfishly squared the ball to his strike partner Jack Brown to slot into an open goal.

With 20 minutes gone, Sports’ counter-attacking came into action as they broke quickly down the left through Adam Steele, who was brought down on the edge of the box.

West stepped up and put the ball over the wall and into the top corner. He then added to his tally just past the hour mark to make it 3-0.

Liam Miles rose high at the back post to head the ball home from a corner for Chickerell’s consolation nine minutes from time.

Sports’ joint managers Andrew Mallet and Steve Churchill were very pleased with the three points.

Mallet said: “To get the three points over the defending champions in our first game is a great start for us, but we can’t get carried away with the result and we plan for Poole away next week now."

Chickens: Bickerstaff, Sanderman, Richards, Miles, Rogers, Charles, Harvey, S Welch, Hansford, Ryan, C Taylor Subs: Brooks, Bill, Houghton