Sudbury's prolific strikers want vase reward for veteran manager Martin
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Your support makes all the difference.If the FA Vase is paraded around the streets of Sudbury the day after the final at Upton Park on 10 May, there will be many football folk in the Suffolk town who will consider it an overdue honour.
AFC Sudbury travel to Mossley for a Vase quarter-final tie tomorrow hoping to reach the last four for the second year in a row. Last season they were surprisingly beaten over two legs in the semi-finals by Tiptree United. The Essex club are fellow members of the Jewson Eastern Counties League, which Sudbury have won for the last two seasons.
This season Sudbury are once again top of their league, having scored 95 goals in 30 games, only three of which have been lost. Success in league football comes easily compared to winning the Vase, though, which is a target that has remained elusive for every club in Sudbury over the years.
AFC Sudbury were formed in 1999 after a merger of Sudbury Town, who once beat Liam Brady's Brighton and Hove Albion in the FA Cup, and Sudbury Wanderers. Town had a good record in the Vase – they were beaten finalists in 1989 and also reached the semi-finals twice and the last eight on another occasion.
Wanderers also enjoyed two runs to the quarter-finals. This season's progress has allowed the merged club's players one last opportunity to reward their millionaire manager, Keith Martin, with the Vase, for the veteran who has been in charge at King's Marsh Stadium since the merger is retiring this summer.
Martin's men proved their worth at the last stage of the Vase, when they beat the talented Cornish side St Blazey, who are unbeaten all season in the South-Western League, 7-1 in a fourth-round replay in Suffolk. Tony Spearing, the former Norwich, Leicester and Plymouth left-back, is the most experienced player in the Sudbury squad but it is their three prolific strikers – Andrew Claydon, Gary Bennett and Sam Banya – who are most likely to do damage to Mossley at Seel Park.
The Lancashire club are managed by the former Coventry City defender Ally Pickering, whose squad includes the ex-Everton and Manchester City full-back Neil Pointon. Mossley, who were beaten Trophy finalists in 1980, have reached the Vase quarter-finals for the third time in the past seven seasons, but they have never been further.
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