Angels in Kent Senior Cup cruise
Tonbridge Angels cruised into the Kent Senior Cup Third Round with a comfortable win over Beckenham Town.
Both sides made several changes from their Saturday starting XI’s with Jay Saunders giving Academy players Ben Martin-Coward, Hayden Velvick and Casey Dudley, who had a fine game capped by a wonderful individual goal, Angels starts. Further scholars, Mackenzie Richardson and Andrew Norburn were introduced as substitutes. Senior players returning were Joe Tyrie, Deondre Date and Ethan Sutcliffe.
Jay Saunders was naturally pleased with the Kent Senior Cup progress and a six goal haul: “It was a worthwhile exercise. I thought Beckenham come here and played some good football. We made a lot of changes, got minutes into people that we needed too; some experience for some of the younger lads coming through, scored a few goals and all in all it was a good night’s work.”
Beckenham, leaders of Isthmian South East, were a potential banana skin, but a positive start with Noel Leighton testing the goalkeeper, Archie Burford, after two minutes and Trevan Robinson rather wastefully, shooting into the side netting after a quarter hour, put the visitors on the back foot.
Tonbridge took the lead in bizarre fashion on 19 minutes when a cross into the box from Sutcliffe was mispunched into his own net by Burford and with three further goals coming in the next 13 minutes the game was taken away from the visitors.
Two minutes after the opening goal, Robinson struck the post from 20 yards before Dudley set up a cross for Leighton to double the Angels lead.
On 28 minutes, Date was sent clear to shoot into the far corner and when Dudley skipped through the Beckenham defence to add a clinical finish the game was over as a contest.
Beckenham scored after three minutes of the second period when Jamarie Brissett set up Tylah Wallace for a close range finish but any hope for the visitors of a stirring comeback ended when a clearance rebounded off substitute Nazir Bakrin for the Angels fifth goal.
Several chances came and went before, on 76 minutes, Bakrin supplied the pass for Date to add his second goal and the Angels’ sixth.
As the game closed out Leighton struck a post and goalkeeper Norburn was given 10 minutes between the sticks.
In the draw, already made, Tonbridge have a home tie against Herne Bay in the next round.