Hornchurch (2) 3 Gibbs 37 Sandat 45 (pen) Balanta 90+3
Tonbridge Angels (1) 2 Leahy 7 Thompson 70
Attendance: 770
Admission: £10 Senior
Mileage: 94/3,396
Valentine’s Day is meant to be a day of the heart, not a day of heartbreak, but Tonbridge Angels’ second defeat in four days following an added time goal was as difficult to stomach as a dodgy oyster served as a romantic hor’dourve.
The visit to Hornchurch, third in the table with games in hand that could take them top, was labelled as a free hit for the Angels, who are slowly getting dragged into a relegation dog fight as teams below them have begun to pick up unlikely results.
But, having taken an early lead, and entering the break 2-1 down to two goals that needed VAR intervention, a second half performance should have brought a deserved point back to Kent.
Angels manager Alan Dunne said: “The boys are gutted, they have emptied the tank and I can only be proud of them coming up against a massive team like Hornchurch. It’s been a week in which we deserved six points, at least four, but we’ve come away with none.”
Hornchurch is an awkward place to watch football with the athletics track, but strangely, I don’t find it quite as soulless as Chelmsford, perhaps helped by the welcoming nature of the volunteers.
But, their grass pitch is a real worry and following Tuesday’s postponement and another week of rain, it wasn’t really expected that the game would go ahead and an 8.30am pitch inspection confirmed those concerns. As it happens, the club officials were confident of its condition after 24 hours of no rain and cancelled the inspection.
Our arrival, after a rare trouble-free ride through the Dartford Tunnel, was greeted with the equally rare glimpse of the great, golden orb in the sky after weeks of interminable darkness. However, as the sun quickly set, the temperature dropped quickly and brought more than the occasional shudder.
Tonbridge welcomed back Sean Shields to the starting line-up in a team that showed three changes from Tuesday’s defeat against Maidenhead Town with Alfie Pavey and Kyle Smith restored to the team.
Tonbridge started as brightly as the sunshine with Shields to the fore, shooting over the bar in the opening five minutes and two minutes later, his shot was only parried into the path of Tom Leahy, who finished from close range.
The Angels were unable to capitalise on their early lead and were forced to defend for long periods after. Following good goalkeeping from Laurie Shala to deny the home side on several occasions, there was a sense of inevitability that the equaliser would come, but not in the circumstances in which it did. Firstly, what is a lumbering centre half such as Harry Gibbs doing crashing in a shot from 25 yards that came down from the underside angle of the bar and post to be cleared only for a linesman’s flag to indicate that the ball had crossed the line. Who knows whether the ball crossed the line, the said official was certainly not in line to make that judgement assuredly and the referee certainly wasn’t having deferred to his assistant.
Tonbridge had their first glimpse of goal since taking their only lead with two minutes remaining in the half after Shields crossed for Pavey to head wide, but as the half entered added time, the home side were awarded a penalty when Henry Sandat was brought down by Angels’ captain, Jordan Thompson, who later claimed that he hadn’t touched the Hornchurch forward, who took the penalty himself, firing into the roof of the net.
Dunne made changes early in the second period replacing Nazir Bakrin and Pavey with Matt Warren and Frankie Baker and the Angels dominated the half and were well deserving of their equaliser on 70 minutes when a ball into the path of Baker saw his shot saved by the feet of the goalkeeper, rebounding to the unlikely recipient of Thompson, who tucked it home from no distance.
At this point, were Tonbridge guilty of over ambition? They sensed an unlikely three points on the road and, indeed, Tom Leahy had a chance to restore the lead, but when the game entered its final five minutes of added time, perhaps the sensible thing would have been to manage the game in the Hornchurch half when in possession, but with possession given away, a ball into the box saw Shala make a great save from Myles Weston only for it to fall to the clinical feet of Angelo Balanta, who tucked it home to the despair of the Tonbridge support.
Substitute Bunmi Babajide had a late chance, but it wasn’t to be and another trip across the bridge was made empty-handed. So much pressure is now on the two upcoming home games against fellow strugglers, Chippenham Town and Hampton and Richmond Borough.
Action pictures: David Couldridge
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