Tonbridge Angels 4 Welling United 2

Match 2/25/2345 - Tuesday, 9th July 2025 - Pre-Season Friendly

Tonbridge Angels (3) 4 Trialist15 12,33,40 Sablier 73
Welling United (1) 2 Vaughan 29 Sinai 62
Attendance: 340
Admission: £10
Mileage: 38/148

Tonbridge Angels eased to their second pre-season win with a 4-2 scoreline in an entertaining encounter with Welling Unitedat the Halcyon Wealth Longmead Stadium.

Craig Nelson utilised the same set of trialists that featured at Margate on Saturday with one of them making a significant impact with a first half hat-trick.

Assistant Manager Joe Vines, taking the post-match interview said of the trialist: “There is a conversation to be had. He is a trialist, but he is someone that is known to us. I’ve known him a long time, he did terrific but alongside others as well. When you think about the nature of the goals, winning the ball high and quick, incisive passes. We will see, these conversations are always ongoing, it makes it a little easier in some ways and also a little more difficult in others!”

Ten years ago to the day, an Angels trialist, Junior Dian, collapsed on the pitch at Whyteleafe and lost his life despite the heroic efforts of Tonbridge Angels physio, Melvin Slight and Junior was remembered with a minute’s silence prior to the start of the game.

Welling, under the new management of Lee Martin, are a squad of many new faces and trialists and, in the early stages looked like a team getting to know each other as the Angels’ passing and movement cut through them almost at will before finally going ahead courtesy of a poor pass across the face of the box that was intercepted and put away by the trialist wearing number 15.

From that reversal, Welling grew into the game and, on 21 minutes, spectators were left open mounted as Jacob Adams, in the Tonbridge goal, brought a series of four, even five, close range saves in a matter of seconds before the ball was hacked to safety.

On 29 minutes, the bad back pass was reciprocated and Welling were level through Ruben Shakpoke, who tucked the ball away nicely into the bottom corner.

Parity was only to last four minutes as trialists 14 and 15 combined to allow the latter the roll the ball past the advancing goalkeeper.

The visitors were continuing to threaten and Adams did well to turn over a rasping shot from Henry Sinai, who then could have done better with a header from the resultant corner.

Five minutes before the break the same trialist combination brought about the hat trick goal for trialist 15.

An entirely new Tonbridge side took the field for the second half but none of the fluency was lost with a shot from Alfie Allen just clearing the bar and following some good wing back play from Bailey Akehurst, Bunmi Babajide turned the cross wide from close range. On 62 minutes, Welling reduced the deficit to a single goal with a good finish from Sinai, but the Angels regained control of the game with several chances ending in near misses before the ball broke on the edge of the box for Marcus Sablier to drive his shot into the bottom corner.

Joe Vines summed up the performance: “I thought it was a good performance, both both sets of 11’s. Once we got used to their shape, we took control of the game both in the first half; in the second we had to get used to their rotation which we did quickly, but with the ball we were very good, without the ball we worked really hard. There is still a lot to work on, but overall, well deserving of our win with a lot of good performances both individually and as a collective.”