Tonbridge 0 Gosport Borough 2

Match 70/13/1096 - Tuesday, 25th March 2014 - Conference South

Tonbridge (0) 0
Gosport Borough (0) 2 Forbes 49, Brown 90+2
Att. 276

Entrance: £6 Senior
Programme: £2.00
Mileage: 26/6,691

Match Report

I’ve always enjoyed a good whodunit on the television and Silent Witness is among my favourites. Over the years the stories have become more and more convoluted and my biggest problem with the programme these days is more often than not, I just don’t get whodunit. It seems that as the years pass I’m a little slower on the uptake.

My analogy between my Silent Witness difficulty and football is the length of time it has taken me to come to the conclusion that Tommy Warrilow’s time is up at Longmead. In fact, whilst many people have been vocal about his removal as manager of Tonbridge Football Club, I’ve just been a silent witness on the issue.

I had no need to have been a forensic pathologist to be able to dissect the past few Tonbridge performances as woefully short of what was needed, and should have been expected, to avoid the drop from Conference South. In a hectic period of 25 days, nine fixtures have been played and Tonbridge have won just the once, but more tellingly they have played four games against fellow relegation strugglers and those matches have yielded just one point.

This latest performance against Gosport Borough, who arrived in Kent second bottom and fresh from the disappointment of a Wembley defeat in the FA Trophy Final, could only be placed in the terrible category. In a game of very few opportunities for either side, when Tonbridge failed to take theirs to open the scoring, it became very difficult once they were chasing the game.

Injuries to Gary Elphick and Jon Heath forced Warrilow to play a strong-running winger, Nathan Green, at centre back with Chris Piper only fit enough to take a place on the bench.

Two nervous teams, aware of the importance of the game, served only to produce a scrappy first half in which the best chances fell to the home side but these in turn failed to ask too many questions of the Gosport goalkeeper, Nathan Ashmore, who endured a first half in which he made some poor decisions but wasn’t punished. Mark Lovell headed a good chance wide and after a lobbed pass from Nathan Pinney that was the highlight of the first half to set up a clear opportunity for Louis Cumbers, but he pulled his shot wide. Ashmore then ventured far from his goal but Michael Bakare was unable to get his shot away before being crowded out by the visiting defenders. It was so frustrating.

Tonbridge were quickly punished in the second half when after five minutes a cross into the box was met with a glancing header from Andy Forbes to delight the eight diehard Gosport supporters behind the goal.

The harder Tonbridge tried to repair the damage the worse it got as they were being picked off on the break with the visitors having the ball in the net a couple of times only to be ruled out for offside.

Ashmore was also redeeming himself from his first half indecision with good saves from Cumbers and substitute Alex Teniola.

It was almost inevitable that, in the time added, Gosport capitalised when Sonny Miles gave the ball away in midfield to Danny Wooden and his cross to Jamie Brown left a tap-in for the goalscorer.

It was a disheartening evening and social media was quickly alive with the blame-game with Warrilow taking the lion's share of the flak. The Tonbridge manager has vowed to see this season through to its bitter end and if he can pull off this Great Escape then he will have the perfect riposte for his detractors. Sadly, I cannot visualise that happening, but then again, I never see the end coming these days.