Tonbridge 1 Peacehaven & Telscombe 2

Match 55/14/1164 - Tuesday 6th January 2015 - Ryman Premier

Tonbridge (1) 1 Carey (pen) 17
Peacehaven & Telscombe (2) 2 Burton 19,25
Att. 248

Entrance: £6 Senior
Programme: £2
Mileage: 36/3,908

Match Report

The old joke goes, that such and such club’s form came down with the Christmas decorations. On 12th night, the optimism that Tonbridge supporters took from two good festive performances, took a severe dip as they produced one of their worst performances of the season against Peacehaven and Telscombe.

If the FA Cup performance at Redhill can be ignored, which obviously it cannot, then Tonbridge have reserved their poorest form for Peacehaven, having taken a season’s worst beating on the Sussex coast and then allowing the visitors to comfortably take home the points from this reverse encounter.

The ever-changing back four featured new signing Frantz Tchonang Ngassa from Whitehawk with Kyle Merson replacing the recalled Tom Hadler in goal.

Tonbridge started brightly and were rewarded in the 17th minute when Lee Carey scored from the penalty spot after Marvin Williams had been brought down.

The goal seemed to have the reverse effect from confidence building and the hosts went into a shell from which they never emerged.

Peacehaven quickly restored parity with Tom Burton converting a cross to the far post and, with 25 minutes on the clock, Burton was once more in the right place when a corner wasn’t cleared.

Although Williams’ speed and directness caused the visitors problems he became something of a lone ranger whilst his team mates were struggling to recognise each other as pass after pass found only an opponent.

A little while back I was discussing with a fellow Gillingham supporter the reason why I have found my football a lot more enjoyable with Tonbridge than with the Gills this season. Whilst they are in similar positions in their respective divisions, I felt that at Tonbridge you could see light at the end of the tunnel, there were reasons to be optimistic. Unfortunately this was the type of performance that categorised those opinions as delusional.