TNS 2 Wingate & Finchley 1

Wingate & Finchley kicked off their pre-season with a long trip to Oswestry for a prestige match against The Welsh League and Cup Winners, The New Saints, who in 10 days time play Helsingborg FC, Champions of Sweden, in the first leg of The Champions League qualifier. This was a prestigious friendly played in the very impressive arena in Oswestry which in 10 days time will play host to a Champions League match which will be televised and played in front on a 1000+ crowd. TNS played the likely 11 that will start against Helsingborg and to give the match extra bite the scouts of Helsingborg were at the match to watch their opponents. The match played on an excellent 4G pitch, which has been approved for Champions League matches, started with the home team in control and it looked like it was going to be a long afternoon as the hosts raced into a 2 goal lead inside 15 minutes with goals from Alex Darlington, who profited from space behind the Wingate defence, and then Phil Baker, who nodded home a simple goal from a rebounded header against the crossbar. After this first 15 minute setback the Londoners began to get back into the game and Leon Smith got his first of the new season with a clinical finish, from a pass by Ola Williams, after excellent work in midfield from Lewis Jones and Max Mitchell. The game see-sawed both ways and each side created chances but there were to be no more goals in an excellent and even game played in an excellent spirit by both teams. In the end Wingate & Finchley would have felt slightly hard done by to lose by the odd goal and after only 4 training sessions the Management team must have been very satisfied by the performance. Lineup: Bobby Smith., Ola Williams, Paul Wright, Marc Weatherstone, Kieron Street, Jordan Fowler, Lewis Jones, David Laird, Leon Smith, Max Mitchell, Murat Karagul Substitutes Ross Parmenter, Max Milner, Mark Henry, Anderson Pinto, Osvaldo Pinto