ROVERS FIND THEIR GROOVE
FREE-SCORING Forest Green Rovers turned in a classy display that saw them win for the first time in seven matches.
A delighted Mark Cooper reflected on a performance that saw his side get the balance right, saying: “In recent games we’ve been committing silly mistakes, and it’s been about trying to find that balance, today we got it right and in truth I felt we should have won by a wider margin”.
Forest Green started the match on the front foot, and could have taken the lead as early as the third minute, Elliott Frear forcing an excellent fingertip save from Alan Julian to deny a certain goal.
With Bromley unable to get to grips with their opponents, Charlie Clough missed a golden opportunity, planting his bullet header wide from Rob Sinclair’s corner.
Eventually the pressure told when Frear gave Forest Green the lead in the 28th minute, Sinclair dispossessed Rob Swaine in the middle of the pitch before releasing Frear, with work still to be done Frear used the defender as a shield and bent a left-foot strike beyond an unsighted Julian.
Just before half-time the visitors extended their lead, Liam Noble’s defence-splitting pass allowed Frear to cross for Christian Doidge, who sidefooted beyond Julian.
Bromley briefly threatened to get back into the game after half-time when Swaine headed in from Jordan Higgs’ cross, but Forest Green restored their two-goal advantage immediately from the restart.
Noble again split the defence with a wonderful through-ball that Keanu Marsh-Brown ran onto before shooting across Julian with a fantastic finish from an acute angle.
Ethan Pinnock added a fourth goal shortly afterwards with a towering header from a Frear free-kick, and for a while it looked like Rovers could rack up a cricket score.
Three minutes from time Rob Swaine received his marching orders for a second yellow following a cynical foul on Doidge, and Doidge himself was to put the icing on the cake with his second and Forest Green’s fifth in injury-time.
Neil Smith was forthright in his assessment of his side’s performance: “We gifted them very easy goals; we weren’t tight or compact enough and I’m very disappointed.”