Friend becomes foe for Sleaford as Rushen hits a treble
An old face came back to haunt Sleaford Town on Saturday as they fell to a 3-1 defeat at Newark Town.
Ex-Green Ryan Rushen struck a hat-trick to seal the points for the home side and make it four defeats on the bounce for Matt Evans’ men.
Newark went in front on the half-hour mark as Rushen found the ball after a fortunate bounce, and slotted it past Harrison Leech with ease from short range, but Sleaford levelled before the break when Josh Parker’s shot was saved by Jake West but Lewis Greenfield followed up to score.
The second half saw Newark soon take the lead again, with Rushen netting just five minutes into the half, before Rushen got his third of the match with 15 to play.
Sleaford continued to throw everything they could at Newark and despite creating more chances, couldn’t earn themselves anything from the game.
Boss Evans told the club’s media afterwards: “The feeling is that it was a game we could have won if we’d been more clinical.
"Newark have had more entries into our third than us into theirs but we’ve had more shots and opportunities to get the goal so it’s disappointing we haven’t got more out of that really.
"The lads were all hungry for it from the off as they believed they could get something today.
"We had some bad luck with the first goal in the way the ball got to Rushy to score, but you make your own luck by being in the right areas and we didn’t do that.
"Playing on a nice pitch our lads saw the opportunity to play some good football and in patches we saw some really nice stuff so that was really exciting at times, but ultimately where it really matters we haven’t delivered.”
Next up for the Greens is a trip to Kimberley Miners Welfare on March 15.
Evans added: “We’ll have the lads in on Saturday – had they won at Newark there might have been a deal done but instead they’ll be training!”