SPHINX boss Luke Hopkins had praised the impact of young goalkeeper Callum Brown after he was thrown in at the deep end to make his full debut away at Continental Star.
Hopkins was without several first team players on Saturday including on loan goalkeeper Curtis Pond for the Midland League Premier Division fixture.
And despite watching his side slip to a 3-0 defeat, Hopkins was quick to praise Brown for making the step up from the club’s Under-16 side.
He said: “Callum (Brown) came in after our other goalkeepers were unavailable and was brilliant.
“He made some superb saves and wasn’t really at fault with any of the goals and even saved a penalty.
“Continental Star also awarded him their ‘opposition man of the match’ and I thank him for stepping in. He’s certainly one to watch in the future.”
Goals from Muhammed Ndow, Tony Okome and Josuha Nelson gave Star all three points and Hopkins feels it was a case of his side not taking their chances, particularly in the second half.
He added: “Good saves and poor finishing left it 1-0 at half-time and we were well in the game”.
“We came out and had a bit more about us and made eight good chances but we hit the bar and the post and suffered from a bit of poor finishing to be honest.
“I expected that we’d take two or three of the chances at least and then the game would have had a different balance. “But we went in search of a point and the game naturally opened up and Star got two goals with counter attacks.
“Overall there were some positives and some negatives. We move on to next week at home where we need points to stay away from the bottom.”
ALVIS Sporting were beaten 4-0 at Division One title favourites Highgate United on Saturday.
The visitors began in a positive fashion with Steve Evans shooting just wide and Taylor Hamill came close to finishing off a neat passing move but his effort whistled narrowly over from the edge of the penalty area.
Highgate took advantage of poor defending to allow Ricardo Richards to open the scoring with a close range shot on 15 minutes and three goals in 18 second half minutes sealved Alvis’ fate.
Martin Crawford netted from close range on 46 minutes before Richards bagged his second nine minutes later and Lei Brown converted a cross eight minutes later.
This Saturday Sphinx host AFC Wulfrunians while Alvis entertain Littleton at Southam.
