Tonbridge Angels 2 Weston-super-Mare 0

Match 60/24/2299 - Saturday, 4th January 2025 - National League South

Tonbridge Angels (1) 2 Shields 25 Nelson 71
Weston-super-Mare (0) 0
Attendance: 832
Admission: Season Ticket
Mileage: 38/4,308

Tonbridge Angels eased to a comfortable win over Weston-super-Mare at a bitterly cold Halcyon Wealth Longmead Stadium with a goal in each half.

Jay Saunders commented after the match: “I thought it was a very impressive performance. Weston are a good side, they have got a lot of players who can hurt you and we limited that.”

Jay made one change from the side that started the abandoned game at Hornchurch with Mo Dabre returning for his 50th appearance for Nazir Bakrin.

The opening minutes of the first half were very much those of Weston-super-Mare who created three chances, each of which needed a good save from the Angels goalkeeper, Matt Rowley. After four minutes, he saved low from Jordan Bastin, then after nine minutes denied James Dodd and two minutes later turned over the bar another effort from Dodd.

In the midst of the brisk opening from the visitors, Charlie Pegrum had a chance for the Angels which he dragged wide of the far post.

After surviving the opening surge from the visitors, the Angels settled and took control of the game with Sean Shields beginning to dominate the midfield. A corner from the left was punched clear by Max Harris but only to the feet of Pegrum whose shot was deflected wide and twice in two minutes Harris needed to save from Shields.

The goal the Angels had been threatening came on 25 minutes when Harry Ottaway picked a pocket for Pegrum to slide a pass through to Shields whose shot found the net via a post.

Tonbridge largely dominated the rest of the half with Shields twice testing Harris but WSM gave fair warning that they were not out of the game with a couple of breaks one of which brought a scramble around the edge of the six yard box.

The second half saw, for the most part, a controlled performance from the Angels without creating too many chances of note until the 71st minutes when a beautifully flighted free kick from Shields was met with a towering header from Ronny Nelson to double the Angels advantage.

Efforts to put the game beyond the visitors came from substitute Trevan Robinson and Crossley Lema; a header from Naz Bakrin and in the dying seconds, Robinson and fellow substitute Jeremy Santos combined well to open up a diving header for the former that was narrowly wide before the referee brought the curtain down to allow the attendance of 832 to hurry to the warmth of their car heaters.

Jay summed up: “We could have gone on and scored another couple but all-in-all it was a really professional performance. Parky and Blacky have said that at times we’ve really looked a young looking side but today it looked like some of those boys have really come of age and I was really pleased with the whole team.”