After six wins out of six in the league, we faced our toughest challenge against Langton Green. The first ten minutes were fairly even, but we made the breakthrough in the 12th minute. Max Turner made a good run to support Chris Phillips on the right wing and his cross broke to top scorer Ben Spring who made no mistake.
This should have settled the nerves and been the platform for a good performance, but the lead only lasted three minutes. Langton equalised when goalkeeper James Faulkner came to gather a tame cross and missed it completely, leaving the Langton striker with a tap-in. Worse was to follow four minutes later when Max Turner dallied on the ball in the penalty area and lost possession, gifting Langton Green a second goal.
Langton's set pieces continued to cause trouble, and when we failed to deal with a corner or close down quickly enough they scored their third with a deflected shot.
Tonbridge started the second half much more brightly and took the game to Langton Green for the first fifteen minutes. Ben Spring forced a good save from the Langton keeper and hit a couple of shots narrowly past the post after powerful runs. Chris Phillips, Chris Newbury and Jamie Wickham also created chances. But we were having to chase the game, which left us vulnerable to counterattacks.
Another poor clearance in the 57th minute led to Langton's fourth goal and they got their fifth in the 69th minute when James Faulkner got his hand to an attempted lob, but the ball still went over his head to leave the striker with a tap-in. Langton got their sixth in the 80th minute when they were first to react to a shot that came back off the post.
We were outthought, outfought and outplayed. There were few players who did themselves justice, but Jamie Wickham worked hard on the left of midfield and Jack Holden showed a lot of fight and played intelligently to win man-of-the-match. |
