Tonbridge 2 Maidenhead United 4

Match 63/13/1090 - Tuesday, 4th March 2014 - Conference South

Tonbridge (1) 2 Pinney 3, Lovell 55
Maidenhead United (2) 4 Green 15,34,82,89 (pen)
Att. 332

Entrance: £6 Senior
Programme: £1.50
Mileage: 26/6,318

Match Report

The theme of the last posting, Gillingham's visit to Bristol City, was the period of squeaky-bum time and following Tonbridge Angel's humiliating 7-0 defeat at Boreham Wood, it was my assertion that they had already reached that point in their season. This made the visit of Maidenhead United, who sat just one point ahead of their hosts, having played two games more, a critical six pointer. Indeed, I considered this, apart from England's World Cup Qualifiers against Montenegro and Poland, the most important game I had attended so far this season.

As the car park emptied following a 4-2 defeat for the Angels, there would have been a lot of worried faces and no shortage of anger at the way they had surrendered a third minute lead and failed to build on a second half equaliser when the tide had certainly turned in favour of the home side.

Given that confidence following the Boreham Wood defeat would probably have been at pretty low ebb, Tonbridge got off to a dream start when Nathaniel Pinney received a ball on the right hand side, drove into the box and beat a defender before firing a shot into the far corner.

Far from serving as a set-back for Maidenhead, the goal acted as a spur and Lewis Carey was asked to make a couple of smart stops before Danny Green equalised after a quarter of an hour. A slick passing movement ended with Harry Pritchard pulling the ball back from the bye-line for Green to finish with ease.

Maidenhead continued to press forward and were rewarded with the lead after 34 minutes when the pairing of Pritchard and Green once more opened up the Tonbridge back line, leaving Green to score his second of the game.

Tonbridge opened the second half on the offensive and the Maidenhead goalkeeper, Elvijs Putnins had some very shaky moments that brought loud vocal reprimands from his manager, Johnson Hippolyte, on the touchline. Mark Lovell should have scored a couple of minutes after the break, but it seemed his confidence deserted him at the vital moment and Pinney and himself waited for each other to have a shot, ending with neither. This was quickly followed by a series of corners from which Tonbridge finally equalised with a Lovell header.

Tonbridge had the momentum at this point to go on and win the game and hit a post and had a goal disallowed in a period past the hour mark. But as seems to happen to teams that are struggling, the missed chances came back to haunt them. With eight minutes remaining, a shot from Adrian Clifton was deflected upwards and into the path of Green, who headed home.

Putnins earned the pleasure of his manager with a diving save from a Chris Piper driven shot before the visitors caught Tonbridge on the break once more and Gary Elphick conceded a penalty which Green converted for his fourth of a personally memorable evening.

Whether this proves to be a critical point in Tonbridge's season will be proved in the coming weeks; walking away from Longmead on Tuesday evening it certainly felt that relegation was a real possibility, but likely or even a certainty, definitely those thoughts can wait for another day.