M1 took on Tunbridge Wells in a clash of last season’s promoted vs relegated teams. However, in the first quarter you’d have been forgiven for thinking Folkestone had been the team recently playing National League, as we coped with the high T Wells press and a ferocious wind to play some beautiful hockey, knocking the ball around the back and up the flanks with ease and releasing the forwards to create havoc in the opposing half. From one such foray Mead crashed the ball across goal and a chance fell to Payne, who cleverly took something off his shot/topped the ball horribly and bounced his effort over the prone keeper and into the net. 1-0 and game on.

The first quarter ended with a stroke for T Wells out of nowhere - Tomlinson ruled to have flattened an onrushing forward, when he felt he stood his ground - but the effort went off the post and wide, possibly off Whitham in goal. In their own words, T Wells were ‘pretty stunned’ at how we’d played, but they used the new quarter-break to regroup and came out stronger. A (honestly, pretty clean-looking) Mead tackle was punished with a PC that was converted strongly, and Folkestone began to retreat into their own 25 as T Wells pushed players up. This was eventually punished, as T Wells retained possession high for some time before finding a pass into the CF on the p-spot, and he made no mistake. 2-1 at the half.

Q3 continued with Folkestone on the back foot, despite now having the wind, and although we pushed our press higher T Wells were able to maintain pressure and carve out opportunities. Eventually the pressure told - although in a supremely unfortunate way, an opposition shot hitting the post and then the back of GK Witham to fall on the line, where a scramble got it over.

Folkestone still felt we could get something out of the game and pushed more men forward, with the best chances in the final quarter falling to Clifford on his reverse, as well as an Isaac Hopkin effort that the goalkeeper smothered. However we also missed a couple of chances to play each other in, and finally T Wells put some gloss on the scoreline in the final minutes with another effort that was saved by Witham but again fell straight to a waiting forward to make it 4-1.

There were some disappointed players at the final whistle, but overall we went toe-to-toe with a strong team and fell short, but not by a huge distance. We next face Horsham at home.