Dunstable Town returned from The Grass Roots Stadium with another three valuable points which lifted them to 15th place in the Spartan South Midlands League Premier Division.
It was a hard-fought contest but played in the right spirit with referee Elliott Mayer able to keep his cards in his pocket for the full 90 minutes.
The evening wasn’t without drama as the floodlights failed on the hour mark, which caused a 13 minute delay in proceedings.
Tring Athletic have invested a significant amount of money in a new floodlight system and have made their clubhouse suitable to use as a children’s nursery during the daytime. Further plans exist to modernize and revamp the ground and its infrastructure into a state of the art facility.
Former Blues Assistant Manager, Ryan Sturges, is now the man in the Tring Athletic hot-seat and on social media after the game he was full of praise for his players.
The match was the second consecutive victory for Blues Caretaker Manager, Anthony Christophi, who has galvanized the players producing two performances that were worthy of the 6 points.
Skipper for the evening was John Sonuga, now in his second spell at the Club. The defensive understanding that has developed between him, new signing from Barton Rovers, Gary Jones, and Bobby Armstrong was key to Dunstable’s victory as was the performance again of Dan Gould between the sticks who made some fine saves and earned his side their first clean sheet in 16 games. The last time the Blues had a clean sheet in a competitive game was against Tring Athletic on the 31st of October 2020.
Dan Trif was the man who was in the right place at the right time at the back post to convert Tyler Fry’s cross on 18 minutes to put the Blues ahead. The build up play was off the training pitch, and the clever backheel from the industrious L’Kharmi Gale to Fry was one of those, “I don’t believe he just did that” moments.
Dunstable could have been one up within a minute of the kick off but Tring came back strongly with two excellent saves from Gould, and a goal line clearance from Armstrong keeping them out.
Just before the half hour, Simon Richards showed a burst of pace and powered through the backline and advanced on goal. Sensing a tight angle, he unselfishly squared the ball but no advancing blue shirt could connect and the chance was gone.
After the break, it was Dunstable in the ascendancy until the power failure on 60 minutes. When the players returned Tring took charge and kept the ball in the Dunstable half for long periods. Former Blue, Cam Brooks, the playmaker for Tring’s best moves.
A double save by Gould and blocked shots by defenders from a corner shortly after the second restart demonstrated the determination of the Blues defence to get the 3 points.
There was another sizeable away following which made up approximately one third of the crowd and many stayed behind after the final whistle to clap the players off at the end pleased that they had seen another good performance.
There’s no fixture then until Saturday October 9th when we travel to Harefield, quickly followed by a home match on Tuesday 12th October against Aylesbury Vale Dynamos, kick off 7.45 pm.
Written by Andrew Madaras