The Keys’ league campaign began six weeks after their semi-final defeat in the Isle of Axholme Cup. Providing the opposition was Barnetby United, a club whose season got under way seven days earlier with a Challenge Cup defeat at home to Hibaldstow, but took the lead in this game through Ryan Jordan. The striker, who scored a hat-trick in this fixture last season, clipped the ball past Aidan Wilkinson after the keeper had parried a save to prevent Lewis Lennox’s shot creeping inside his left-hand post in the fourth minute.

The Keys responded with chances of their own; Shay Barron put a one-on-one chance wide of Barnetby’s goal before Sam Shipman had a shot blocked by the foot of United’s keeper Tom Tuplin. Tuplin got down well to save a shot from Callum Mold on the half hour, but there was little he could do to prevent a Crowle equalizer shortly before half-time. Jamie Goodhand wrong-footed his marker outside the penalty area and touched the ball to his right before firing across and past a full-stretch Tuplin.

A player who has impressed in his first season with the Keys is Jacob Hibbard, and the defender scored his first goal following a corner in the fourth minute of the second half. Goodhand’s kick from the right was headed back across goal by Jacob Dunstan, Hibbard’s initial header was cleared but the ball fell in the right place for him to force it into the Barnetby goal and give his side the lead.

It was an advantage that would last only six minutes. Kian Humphriss, who had headed a clearance from beneath the crossbar to keeper out a shot from Mold, would receive the ball in the Keys penalty area and take two defenders out of the game by feinting to his left before moving to his right and sending a shot across Wilkinson and inside the far post. Within a minute the Keys were back ahead when Mold dispossessed Dylan Fox and kept his nerve with a clear run to goal and calm finish for his first goal for the Keys.

With over thirty minutes left to play there was still plenty of time for Barnetby to find a way back into the game and attention turned towards Crowle’s end of the field where Fox and Oliver Fielden both came close to drawing the sides level, but if Barnetby were creating the better chances, the better finishes were the property of the Keys, and Mold’s second goal, a calmly-taken looping shot from wide on the right after Sam Shipman’s perfectly-timed through-ball, sealed the victory and the points in the eighty-seventh minute.