Match report Grays Athletic 3 Angels 1

With games starting to run out and teams below and around Tonbridge in the table beginning to put mini-runs of victories together, Angels supporters will be starting to worry that their club is facing the prospect of consecutive relegations and a third season running of drop zone battles. The problem last night was that those concerns didn’t appear to have transmitted themselves to the team when they took to the field against a mid- table Grays Athletic whose own season has pretty much run its course apart from a League Cup final with Hendon to look forward to.
One might in fact have been mistaken for thinking the teams had swapped places in the league for Tonbridge produced a performance which had “end of season” written all over it with a largely lack lustre attack, a mistake riddled defence and a midfield that lacked energy and bite. Despite the 3-0 half time score line, it was not a 45 minutes of all-out attack by Grays – they didn’t need to. Every time they chose to go forward they looked likely to score with Correy Davidson and Dumebi Dumaka the pick of their players.
The goals came at regular intervals. On 13 minutes Harry Agombar beat Angels reserve keeper Jack Kelly all ends up with a free kick from just outside the box, on 35 minutes Dumaka profited from an awful mix up in the visitors defence and on 42 minutes poor defending again presented Dumaka the chance of his brace which he duly took. Just two minutes previously the referee seemingly had handed Angels a lifeline when he showed a straight red to Grays’ Jordan Wilson for kicking out but the home side would not let it disturb their momentum.
The second period naturally saw Tonbridge have much more possession but mostly in areas where they couldn’t hurt Grays and in all honesty chances were few and far between. Eventually, Billy Medlock back with the club on a loan deal with Sutton United did give the away supporters something to cheer about beating keeper Lamar Joseph-Johnson with a decent shot from the edge of the area having eventually made some space for himself, but it was only ever going to be a consolation strike.
And so the fifty or so Tonbridge supporters made their weary way back over the Dartford Bridge to Kent knowing that their team has just six matches to preserve Ryman Premier status with a difficult trip to play- off contenders Leiston next up. Somehow Steve McKimm and his coaching team have to lift the players for their challenges ahead. A post match interview with Steve will be available for viewing hopefully later today on this website.