Tunbridge Wells 3 Deal Town 1

Match 66/14/1175 - Tuesday 17th February 2015 - Southern Counties East

Tunbridge Wells (1) 3 Fuller 33, 54 Booth 90+4
Deal Town (0) 1 Philpott 72
Att. 191

Entrance: £2
Programme: £1.50
Mileage: 36/4,822

Tunbridge Wells’ hopes of silverware rest this season with the Southern Counties East League Cup, of which they are semi-finalists. This is some way short of where they would have hoped to have been at this point of the season but in their quest to at least finish third in the League they could prove to be a serious nuisance to the championship contenders who, Phoenix Sports aside, all have to play the Wells.

This re-arranged game, on a cold evening at Culverden, against a lowly Deal Town side was largely one-way traffic and the fact that Tunbridge Wells couldn’t put their visitors to the sword was largely down to Nick Shorey, the Deal goalkeeper.

A series of fine saves, culminating with a flying one-handed effort to claw a shot away from the top corner, turned light-hearted banter from the South Stand Choir into verses of “Sign Him Up”!

A league cup fixture, 10 days ago, saw the unfortunate sight of Deal’s Jamie Marriott being stretchered away from Culverden with a serious injury. Tunbridge Wells made the fantastic gesture of lowering admission prices in the hope that supporters would make a contribution to a bucket collection for the player who is self-employed and unable to work whilst incapacitated. The collection raised £350, a wonderful effort that was duly acknowledged by the player on social media.

Martin Larkin, perhaps with an eye on Saturday’s fixture against Greenwich Borough, rested his strike duo of Paul Booth and Brendan Cass to the bench with Chris Seenan and Jack Goldsmith leading the line.

Despite a late inspection, the pitch appeared to play pretty well and shouldn’t take the blame for the home side making heavy going of this win. A near post header from Joe Fuller from a corner eventually broke down some stoic defending from the East Kent club in the 33rd minute.

When Fuller doubled his tally, nine minutes after the break, the 191 attendance could be forgiven for expecting the floodgates to open. That they didn’t was solely down to Shorey.

Tunbridge Wells were given a shock of their own, when Ryan Philpott lifted the ball over Steve Lawrence with 18 minutes to go to reduce the deficit and when the Wells’ keeper was asked to make a serious save a few minutes later, there were a few palpitations on the south terrace.

The game was finally put to bed in the fourth minute of time added on when a cross from the excellent Ian Parsons was finished by Booth.

It was the generosity of the Tunbridge Wells club and its supporters that were the real winners on the night and our best wishes go to Jamie Marriott for a speedy recovery.