Tonbridge Angels (0) 1 Lema 58
Chippenham Town (1) 1 Mehew 42
Attendance: 935
Admission: Season Ticket
Mileage: 38/4,346
The Angels had to be content with a point, despite enjoying the lion’s share of possession as the happy travellers of National League South, Chippenham Town, showed their resilient selves.
Jay Saunders reflected: “First half we were dominant in possession, we had a perfectly good goal disallowed. We showed a good response to come back into the game but if you go a goal down I suppose you take it as a point gained.”
As fixtures fell to the weather by the dozen, the functionality of a 3G pitch ensured that the game went ahead, despite temperatures that fell five degrees below zero overnight and were not hovering much into positive territory at kick off.
Jay’s team selection saw three changes with Trevan Robinson, Nazir Bakrin and Scott Wagstaff coming into the starting XI for Ryan Hanson (injured), Harry Ottaway (illness) and Mo Dabre, who took a place on the bench but wasn’t fully fit.
In the sixth minute, a left-sided cross from Sean Shields appeared to be spilt by the Chippenham goalkeeper, Will Henry, allowing Charlie Pegrum to pass the ball into an unguarded net but the referee decided that Henry had been impeded under a challenge from Robinson and disallowed the goal.
In a first half, dominated by the Angels, Shields saw an effort turned over the crossbar by Henry and Robinson hooked the ball over the bar from six yards before Tom Mehew had a great chance to open the scoring for the visitors, against the run of play, dragging his shot wide on 39 minutes.
But, three minutes later, a cross from the right was only partially cleared to the edge of the box from where Mehew struck a cleanly hit shot that Matt Rowley got his hands to but couldn’t prevent the ball finding the bottom corner.
Worse might have followed when Mehew then somehow managed to shoot wide from close range, unmarked, in front of goal in first half added time.
The passage of play continued to be hugely in Tonbridge’s favour into the second half with Henry saving from Shields before substitute Akehurst played in Wagstaff to stand up a cross that was headed into the bottom corner by Crossley Lema, who arched his body backwards to make contact with the cross.
Tonbridge had their chances to win the game through Gianluca Botti, Pegrum and Jeremy Santos but the Chippenham defence stayed strong and created a couple of chances of their own on the break, one of which required a low save from Rowley.
Jay added on missed chances: “You have to be clinical. We were in control of the first half, but looking at it, they’ve had two good chances, they’ve scored and then, right after that, we’ve given the ball away and they nearly score again. They could go in 2-0 up when, for the first half-hour, we’ve been in control. Trevan has to score a couple, the keeper has made a good save, but we were not clinical enough and that’s why we have been looking at other options and seeing what’s out there.”
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