Tonbridge Angels (2) 3 Turner 21 (pen) Modeste 43 Hanfrey 69
Chipstead (Surrey) (0) 0
Attendance: 206
Admission: £4 Senior
Programme: None
Mileage: 38/158
Eighteen months on from the last time supporters entered Longmead Stadium for a first team fixture, many made an emotional return to a place that has sadly changed forever with the absence of dearly departed family and friends to whom proper farewells were denied by the pandemic.
In 18 months some players have come and gone and supporters who have previously held season tickets for many years were never able to make their own judgements on whether they were good, bad or indifferent.
Some of those players took the club to the First Round of the FA Cup for the first time in 46 years; won matches at Chelmsford and Billericay for the first time in a generation but the pandemic denied their joy.
The pandemic still has its hold. Life is not normal when you have to leave your telephone number to enter a football ground and the click now comes from your mouse rather than a turnstile. But Longmead was a happy place, as the song goes “friends shaking hands, saying how do you do”, just because they can.
The game itself was not so much an hor d’oeuvre for a little matter of a Euro Quarter Final, more the welcoming bowl of peanuts on the bar, but the football served up by the Angels was a tasty appetiser for the feast that was to come.
Tonbridge went ahead after 21 minutes when Ibrahim Olutade was brought down in the box for Turner to convert the penalty.
Tonbridge returned the compliment after 33 minutes but Jonny Henly made a fine save from the Chipstead spot kick.
A lofted cross from the right found the leap of Ricky Modeste to head home on his first appearance for the club, two minutes before the break.
A well driven shot from Tom Hanfrey into the bottom corner wound up the afternoon’s scoring after 69 minutes and allowed the triumvirate of 16 year olds another 20 minutes pitch time.
England spared the nation a nervous evening with a resounding victory and after the emotional return to Longmead, it really did feel that Football’s Coming Home.
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