Tonbridge Angels (1) 1 Fielding
Enfield Town (2) 3 Hutchinson Youngs
Attendance: 798
Admission: Season Ticket
Mileage: 38/3,770
If ever there was an illustration that nothing can be taken for granted in this, an elite division, it was encompassed in 90 frustrating minutes for the Angels.
Enfield Town, without a win in eight games and bottom of the table, arrived at the Halcyon Wealth, Longmead Stadium to meet a Tonbridge Angels side that were unbeaten in league matches at home but were to return to north London with three very handy points in their back pocket.
When asked where the performance of his side had come from, Jay Saunders honestly answered: “I’m not sure. I’m not going to stand here and defend anyone but all over the park we weren’t good enough tonight. I think it’s a mentality thing, You turn up, we are playing a team bottom of the league and we are unbeaten at home and I think some of the boys just thought we would roll them over.
“We made them fully aware that Enfield have some good individual players. They’ve played this league and higher, regardless of their league position but too many turned up and expected to go through the motions and we lost too many individual battles. We didn’t do that side of it that you have to do against teams down the bottom which is show fight and desire.”
On a cold, damp evening at Longmead, Jay made one change from the team that saw League action at Weymouth with Sean Shields coming in for Makise Evans, who took a place on the bench.
In contrast to how the game was to materialise, the Angels positively roared out of the traps with a first minute shot from Shields being acrobatically turned over the bar by the Enfield Town goalkeeper, Rhys Forster, and from the resulting corner, Jeremy Santos saw his shot comfortably saved by the visiting custodian.
The first warning shot that the visitors were not here to make up the numbers came on six minutes when ex-Angel loanee, Jake Hutchinson, dragged his shot narrowly wide from close range.
Enfield took the lead on 20 minutes when a cross from the right from Lennon Peake was met with a deft header from Hutchinson that was steered beyond the reach of Matt Rowley to nestle into the corner of the net.
Rowley was then asked to make a brilliant stop, three minutes later, pushing Sam Youngs shot away at full stretch to safety with the help of the post.
Just past the half-hour, Enfield Town doubled their advantage. A left-sided corner was headed on at the near post by Bayley Brown where it was met with a second header from Hutchinson.
A quick response was needed from the Angels, and their supporters got it, when a Shields corner saw Jamie Fielding duck into space to bury a header and give the home side something to take into the second period.
After five minutes of the second half, in which Ethan Sutcliffe put a header over, Saunders made changes with Taylor Maloney being replaced by Ryan Hanson and moments later, Evans came on for Charlie Pegrum.
Santos flashed a cross across the face of goal that begged a touch and, on the hour, Scott Wagstaff was replaced by Mo Dabre. This was quickly followed by a fourth change when Crossley Lema entered the fray for Sutcliffe.
Dabre’s injection of energy gave the Angels fresh impetus and on 74 minutes he was sent clear but one-on-one with Forster, the goalkeeper saved with his legs and, came off best two minutes later when Dabre’s shot was saved at the second attempt.
But, with 10 minutes remaining, Tonbridge succumbed to the sucker punch when a quickly taken throw saw Youngs go clear to finish clinically from a tight angle.
Jay summed up: “Enfield deserved to win, we weren’t good enough. If you look at possession, we had more than them but did we do anything with it? No. We gave them two goals to hang on to and to slow things down which – and fair play to them – they did really well. I can’t stand here and say we deserved to win that game of football because we didn’t do enough and we were nowhere near good enough tonight.”
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