Ashford Town secured their second win of the League campaign with a 3-0 win over Guildford City at Short Lane.  However, an inspired performance from City 'keeper Ali McQueen meant that the Tangerines had to work for the points, with all the goals coming in the last twenty minutes.  Substitute George Jennings opened the scoring, with Jimmy Stanford making it two just two minutes after the opener.  With three minutes remaining, another substitute, Dwayne Lowe-Simms completed the scoring with a good headed finish.

The match report is here.  Afterwards, Manager Mick Snowden spoke to the Official Website about the season so far, and his assessment of how his players are doing:

We started by asking the experienced boss whether he was happy with an opening to the season which saw his players win all seven of their pre-season matches, then score nine goals in winning their initial league matches.  Mick chose his words carefully:

"I'm happy with most of the things that are going on.  I'm happy with the fact that I've got 31 boys who want to play football for Ashford Town and that 25 of them are good enough.  By them working hard over the summer, we've proved that what I'm asking them to do works." 

The former First Team Manager expanded on his theme by talking about aspects of the performance:  "Tonight, we were so solid that defensively we were probably 90% right and consequently, Guildford hardly had a chance to get into our penalty area.  For me, that's a real bonus.  Now, I've got to get them to believe in what we're doing when we've got the ball - like any young players, there's a lot of testosterone out there and they want to do things quickly, without thinking.  But I'm very pleased with how things are going and I don't see why that shouldn't continue."

After the 3-0 win for Ashford, Mick admitted that his side had both a physical and tactical edge over their visitors:  "They looked a very young team.  They looked good and they want to play good football and they did that at times.  But I thought that the way we set up, we put them under pressure in the right areas of the pitch.  They were not a bad team for what I would suggest were predominantly first years [Under 17s].  We finished the game with five first years, but we started with only two and it's a big difference. Second years are organised better and are physically bigger and stronger."

Finally, Mick offered his view on his own side's performance, especially in the final third:  "The first three or four chances that went begging I said 'hard luck' because that was in the first ten minutes.  After that, you start getting cross, because it means that somebody isn't anticipating things correctly or doesn't have enough conviction to score.  At nil-nil at half-time, you know it could stay like that, then we make a mistake and before you know it...  Without wanting to exaggerate, I thought we should have turned around at least three-nil up and then gone on from there, but there you are.  I've got to be happy with no goals against and I'm more happy that the two young boys who've come on, Dwayne Lowe-Simms and George Jennings have both scored, which gives them encouragement.  George Jennings had an excellent twenty minutes or so."