Tonbridge Angels (0) 4 Tanga 61 Sutcliffe 71 Trialist 78 Lintott 84
Eastbourne Borough (1) 1 Rees 27 Phillips 46
Attendance: 389
Admission: £5
Mileage: 38/374
FULL MARKS FOR SPIRIT
Full marks for spirit. For a second consecutive time Tonbridge Angels came from behind to record a pre-season victory, this time against newly-relegated to the Isthmian League Premier, Eastbourne Borough.
Matches against Borough are rarely without goals and this one proved no different with Tonbridge coming back from two goals down after an hour to score four times in a spirited recovery.
Nobody expected Eastbourne Borough to produce the season they had last term, in fact, given the resources available to them, many had them down as promotion candidates. But, in a season that saw them go through four managers, they finished rock bottom. Their final manager, Steve King, was unable to recover an impossible situation and remains in-situ to mount a campaign to return to National League South at the first attempt. King is a proven manager with a lengthy CV that has seen success and failure in equal measure. He’s a colourful character and his passion, if we can call it that, has shown no sign of abating from the touchline.
On a very warm evening after another day of intense heat, Ricky Korboa was available for his first start; one trialist started and another two entered the fray in the second half.
The opening quarter, as we are seemingly now bound to call it, up to the hydration break was competitive, if uneventful, before Ethan Sutcliffe headed narrowly wide following a Harry Gardner free kick.
Eastbourne opened the scoring on 27 minutes with a soft goal conceded. A pass inside the defender from Kai Corbett found Josh Rees who scored into the far corner despite Nathan Harness getting a hand to the ball.
Early in the second period, the visitors doubled their advantage with a goal that would frustrate both the manager and supporters alike. A Corbett corner from the right saw Giles Phillips rise at the far post, virtually unchallenged, to head home.
It was such a poor goal, but if it did nothing else, it stung the Angels into recovery mode and the deficit was halved on 61 minutes, when Jephte Tanga, cut in from the right to despatch his shot into the bottom corner.
On 71 minutes, a Bailey Akehurst free kick was dropped by the Eastbourne goalkeeper, ex-Angel Lewis Carey, and Sutcliffe was on hand to stab the ball home.
Tonbridge were now swarming all over their visitors and when Frankie Baker worked himself into a crossing position, he picked out a trialist who swept the ball home.
A change to the rules of the game caught Carey out for the final goal as he took too long to take a goal kick which became a corner from which Akehurst sent to the near post for Harvey Lintott to touch home.
That is the last of Tonbridge’s PSF’s at Longmead with a visit to Wingate and Finchley next Saturday. A trip around London’s South Circular is far from enticing and I will toddle down the road to Staplehurst Monarchs.
No comments:
Post a Comment