City's youngsters showed their growing maturity in a comfortable win against a far more experienced Kent side at New Lodge on Saturday - and it was little wonder that watching top club scouts were the busiest notetakers all afternoon.
Even without the experienced Girling duo and unavailable leading goal scorer Ian Cambridge, City more than coped admirably with a physically contentious opposition who had three players booked and were unfortunate not to have played for an hour with 10 men.
With nothing at stake for either side, there was an element of an end-of-season fayre about the game, brightened only by some attractive football from City with seven youngsters in their staring line-up.
Tesfaye Bramble almost scored in the 13th minute with a clever lob that dropped just over the bar, and again in the 24th minute when he forced veteran Tonbridge goalkeeper James Creed into a tremendous save.
City finally broke the deadlock two minutes before the interval.
Following a partially cleared City corner, Barry Lakin drove the ball low and hard which Creed only managed to parry and Bramble deftly found the net from an acute angle.
The early part of the second half saw the visitors have all the pressure and City goalkeeper Paul Catley twice did well to foil their lively attack.
But City came back strongly and in the 70th minute they netted a second goal.
It came from Mark Greatorex who jinked his way through down the right, and held off two defenders before ramming the ball home off Creed at the near post.
Six minutes later, with the Tonbridge rearguard now in some disarray, Ollie Berquez waltzed through, played a one-two with Nobuhiro Yamazaki, before slipping the ball past the stranded Creed and into the net.
Almost immediately City nearly made it 4-0 when the skill of Bramble was too much for defender Ian Gibbs who unceremoniously hauled him down from behind when he was clear.
But a 3-0 win was a fair reflection of City's performance on the day with impressive contributions from all the defence, notably Catley.
Chelmsford City: Catley; Coburn, Reeve, Darton, Wardley (Strong); Greatorex, Sutton, Yamazaki, Lakin; Berquez, and Cambridge. Unused substitutes: Shirley, Newman.
Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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