Why Sam's Ful of potential ...

By Wendy Gee -

SAM Wilson brought a ray of sunshine to an otherwise gloomy weekend for Eastleigh.

The Spitfires - the lowest scorers in the Blue Square Bet South - paid the price for missed chances in Saturday's 3-0 defeat at south coast rivals Eastbourne Borough which drops them to 19th in the table.

But earlier that day manager Ian Baird had watched on-trial Spitfires frontman Sam Wilson score twice for Fulham's academy side in a 4-1 victory over Portsmouth.

The West End lad celebrated his 17th birthday with a confident one-on-one finish and a snap shot as he sought to impress ex-Saints Huw Jennings, Fulham's academy director, and Malcolm Elias, who is head of talent identification and recruitment for the Premier League club's academy and is credited with discovering Theo Walcott.

Baird said: "Sam scored two and I thought he did very well. I spoke to Huw and Malcolm afterwards and we're waiting to see what's going on.

"Malcolm said he would contact us today."

Unfortunately for Baird and Eastleigh those were the only goals to savour.

Despite fighting hard and enjoying plenty of possession, the Spitfires came off second best against an Eastbourne side relegated from the Conference National last season.

The sorry statistic for Eastleigh is that they have scored just nine goals in their opening dozen league games.

"We conceded poor goals and missed our chances as usual," summed up Baird.

"They had six chances and scored three and we had 11 and scored none."

Some fans have suggested on the Spitfires forum that that is a slight exaggeration, but Baird said: "I may be wrong, but all I know is that Kev Dixon writes down the statistics and those were the figures he gave me.

"Our chances weren't just half-chances, they were one-on-ones, Richard Gillespie missed a load of chances and the keeper's made some good saves."

With Gillespie yet to score this season and Andrew White going through a lean patch, there have been calls from supporters to restore Andy Forbes to his old role up front.

But having initially been brought back to the club as a centre back, Forbes - scorer of 144 goals in 281 appearances - has been filling in as an emergency left-back.

"If I put Forbesy up front, who do I play at left-back?" said Baird.

"We are where we are because we are what we are."