Report By Andrew Finch

Two late goals from the visitors took the gloss off the win, however it was a mixed bag of a performance and perhaps not as convincing as the scoreline suggests.

The Moles rode their luck in the first half and were once again indebted to Liam Allen for some fine saves, although in two-goal Josh Andrew had the game’s outstanding player.

Andrew has played in virtually every outfield position in his time with the Moles and excelled in the left wing-back role and caused the visitors problems all night with his pace, trickery and direct running.

He opened the scoring inside two minutes when he exchanged passes with Manny Quarshie and curled a wonderful effort beyond Oshane Brown from the edge of the box.

Quarshie managed to clear goal, netting, and almost the giant oak tree behind the goal with one effort, and was only marginally more accurate with another effort later in the half.

The usually selfless Olu Akinsanya shot wastefully wide with Ross Chalke poised for a tap in at the far post, and Tom Windsor failed to hit the target from Andrew’s cross.

However, it was far from one-way traffic. Time and again the Moles gave East Grinstead’s dangerman Alex Gaggin too much space down the left, and he caused chaos with his close control and trickery.

He set up Will Hoare to smack an effort against the bar, and was then denied by a very good stop from Allen. In the ensuing scramble Ryan Allen made a vital block on the line.

There was a bizarre incident midway through the half when Gaggin clearly took a dive inside the box following a coming together with Taylor Roles, got straight up and then appeared to be hacked down by the same player. The ref chose to punish neither dive or foul.

A goal appeared to be coming, and it was slightly against the run of play that it arrived for the Moles on the stroke of half-time.

A lightning quick counter-attack from an East Grinstead corner saw Andrew exchange passes with Akinsanya and run half the length of the pitch to fire in his and Molesey’s second.

The second half was only a few minutes old when Quarshie made up for his earlier misses by latching onto Antonio Simeone’s smart cutback to thunder an unstoppable effort into the top corner from the edge of the box.

Simeone was once again commanding at the back all evening and grabbed Molesey’s fourth from the spot after Chalke had been upended, unceremoniously denying Andrew the opportunity of a hat-trick in the process.

Brown’s fine save was next to deny Andrew his hat-trick, whilst at the other end Windsor cleared a header from Marcus Elliott off the line.

The Moles were sloppy in the closing stages, and substitute Dan Hogan fired home with three minutes to go, before setting up Hoare to fire in a second a few minutes after.

The win was merited and moves the Moles into mid table. However, you sense they will need to be switched on for the full ninety minutes at Aylesbury on Saturday in order to progress into the next round of the FA Trophy.