Egham Town faced Bracknell Town for the second time in two weeks, this time in the Velocity Trophy second round. Having won comfortably at Larges Lane the visitors would have been hopeful of an easy passage into the third round and a home tie against Felixstowe and Walton United. Since that defeat there have new recruits, but some of them, and leading scorer Kezie Ibe, were not available. Another new man came in at centre back, Darren Abbey coming from Barnet and looking like a good fit. What came out of this was an improvement on the loss at Molesey that dumped the Sarnies into bottom place of the Bostik South Central. The Robins had also shuffled their squad and it showed as their intensity did not match that displayed in the first game. They had the better of what chances were carved out, Guy Hollis forcing a fine save from Matt Nolan in the Egham goal. From the corner Nolan made a scrambling grab on his line from an Adam Cornell effort.
Nolan saved Matthew Day’s free kick and then from Gavin James. The Robins’ desire to win this game was demonstrated by the introduction of Liam Ferdinand for Cornell. Egham did not have the firepower to trouble their Berkshire visitors, but kept plugging away. A slalom run by Danny Julienne nearly brought reward and from a Josh Andrew through ball Brandon McCarthy was nearly in on Bracknell Mark Scott. It took until two minutes from the end for the deadlock to be broken, Carl Davies rising highest to a corner to thump home a header for the winner.
Sarnies boss Ashley Smith would be pleased with the determination of his squad not to take another thumping and when he has his full squad available, hopefully for the home game against Marlow on Saturday, he will be able to judge what he needs to do next.
EGHAM TOWN: Matt Nolan, Tochukwu Okolo, Alessandro Sancese, Merrick James-Lewis, Darren Abbey, Greg Haydon, Sean McCormack, Danny Julienne, Brandon McCarthy, Ashley Lodge, Rhys Rabess. Substitutes: Josh Andrew (McCormack, 74), Abraham Eze (McCarthy, 93), Harry Tucker, Ashley Smith.