Needham Market (0) 0
Tonbridge (2) 2 Blewden 2, Elder 23
Attendance: 258
Entrance: £6 Senior
Programme: £2
Mileage: 225/4,296
A great run up to Suffolk had us arriving in plenty of time to make acquaintance with the friendly folk of Needham Market, although we were slightly disappointed that the most enthusiastic tea lady on the Ryman League circuit was not, this year, wearing her yellow Doctor Martens! She was as bubbly as ever though and is a great asset to the club.
Standing with us in the burger queue, if Steve McKimm is reading this, they were drinking tea, was Luke Allen who was suspended and Tommy Whitnall who had taken a knock to the knee. This left a strange looking starting line-up with Damian Scannell in the midfield holding role and Luke Blewden playing wide right with new signing, Alex Akrofi, alongside Nathan Elder.
Since last year's visit to Bloomfields there has been a new covered terrace behind one of the goals erected. The pitch looked better than last season, although it was heavily leaf-strewn.
Tonbridge could not have got off to a better start. After two minutes, a short corner routine, straight off the training ground, saw Tom Phipp deliver an inch-perfect cross the the far post where Blewden met it with a firm header to open the scoring.
Scannell and Phipp quickly found a good understanding in the middle of the field and the visitors created chances with Elder heading wide; a speculative shot from Phipp going over and Sonny Miles directing a header wide from a Wheeler corner. We had reached the 18th minute before Needham's Luke Ingram shot straight at Anthony Di Bernardo.
After the 22 minutes, the referee took a substantially hit cross field pass from Phipp on the side of the head, knocking him out. Sadly, and I'm guilty as charged, when the referee takes a hit, the natural inclincation is to laugh, but it quickly became evident that the poor guy was in trouble. A 15 minute delay ensued before he was stretchered away and taken to hospital.
As with the opening of the game, Tonbridge roared into action on the restart. A Wheeler free kick was sent into the box where it was met by the head of George Beaven, who nodded it down for Elder to shoot into the bottom corner to double their advantage.
Akrofi enjoyed a lively debut with three efforts either side of the break only marginally wide but after 68 minutes was guilty of a glaring miss when set up by Elder his shot was badly mishit.
The game sadly ended with an unseemly fracas that began with an flailing arm into the face of a Tonbridge defender and spilt over to the respective benches.
After Tuesday's exit from the FA Trophy this was a return, perhaps not to the early season form, but nevertheless a thoroughly good professional performance against a side well-placed in the division.
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