A first home win for Tonbridge leaves Steve McKimm’s side significantly better off than this time last year.

Angels’ 2-0 victory over Concord means they have an extra five points on the board in their second season back in National League South.

Second-half goals from Tom Parkinson and Ben Greenhalgh, against his old club, secured a deserved victory and moved them into the top 10.

McKimm said: “I’m not a great one for stats normally but I did the stats before the game, comparing this season to last year.

“Before Concord the players had surpassed what they did last year, two points better off and reaching the first round of the FA Cup.

“They’ve done ever so well and after beating Concord we’re five points off than we were after 10 games last season. Now we look at the next 10 games.

“In my eyes that’s progression and if we keep doing that, we’ll be in this league next season. We are a club that’s building and will continue to build. We’re not a quick fix.

"We want to be established in this league for a few years and that’s the way to do it.”

McKimm has never been concerned where the points come from but it was nice to get the monkey off their backs with a home win.

The team-talk was longer than usual and his players delivered.

“I told them to believe in themselves,” said the manager. “I went through the other games we’ve played - it was quite an in-depth conversation before a match.

“There’s away games where we’ve thrown our bodies on the line and come away with clean sheets. We did that on Tuesday night and deserved our win.”

Parkinson went into the game vowing to prove he’s good enough for National South after sitting out the whole of last season injured.

He’s still building match fitness but he’s getting there, with the opening goal - his second in as many games - capping a man-of-the-match performance.

McKimm said: “He was sluggish in the first 20 minutes but that was after playing 90 minutes on Saturday. I wanted to see if he could do back-to-back games.

“After that, he grew into it, kept things simple and got his goal."

Tom Beere will serve a three-game ban after the FA rejected Angels’ appeal against his dismissal in Saturday’s 2-1 defeat by Hemel.

McKimm felt it was harsh at the time but the original decision has been upheld.

He said: “The appeal was unsuccessful, which doesn’t surprise me, because I don’t think we’ve ever had any success.

“I’ve seen two other red cards rescinded in our league that are worse than Tom Beere’s. I can’t fathom out how they make decisions.

"We followed the process, we sent fast motion, slow motion and the slow motion shows he caught the player on the foot, not the knee area, which is what the referee told us at half-time.

"We tried, we failed, so he does his ban.

Tonbridge, who are without a game this weekend, host Chippenham next Tuesday.

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