Eastbourne United started their home season at Newhaven's Fort Road ground in the extra preliminary round of the emirates FA cup on Saturday.
With the Oval 3G not yet ready, the higher league visitors from Gravesend were much fancied to take the honours back home.
The early exchanges were dominated though by United, McCreadie in particular being a foul magnet , before on 22 minutes he was hauled down in the area and the Bengal Right back saw Red. McCreadie himself converted the penalty for 1-0. Once Bengal were down to 10, there only looked to be one winner as United dominated the midfield, despite kicking into lashing wind and rain, Ed Ratcliffe nearly doubled the lead on the half hour, but a great block kept it to one.
The halftime break invigorated United, with 5 minutes of the restart, Baran Kartals deep cross hit the bar, Ball collected and fed it to Ratcliffe to make it 2-0. Just 10 minutes later McCreadie had the ball in the net again, only to have it ruled out for offside. Creese picked up a yellow shortly after, but United were not to be denied- McCreadie took an elbow to the face and was awarded a penalty, brilliantly saved by the keeper. United didn’t wait too long for a third as McCreadie’s sublime pull down was fed to Charlie Ball to make it 3-0. United were starting to overrun the Bengal defence now, and in injury time the keeper hauled down McCreadie, who made it 4-0 at the second attempt. United now face the long trip to Kingstonian in the next round, while this coming Saturday they make the even longer league trip to Petersfield.