BRAINTREE TOWN 1 AFC SUDBURY 0

FA Trophy first round proper

His players may have made harder work of it than he would have liked, but Braintree Town manager Alan Devonshire was pleased that his team didn’t provide an FA Trophy upset story.

The rivalry between the Iron and their near neighbours from Suffolk goes back many years, but Braintree have progressed further up the non-league pyramid and league positioning was respected at the Miles Smith Stadium.

Vanarama Conference Premier side Braintree beat Ryman League division one north AFC Sudbury 1-0 in this first round tie thanks to Simeon Akinola’s second-half strike.

It could have been a more emphatic victory as the Iron’s unwanted habit of spurning a number of scoring opportunities resurfaced.

However, Devonshire was just happy that the name of Braintree Town was in Monday’s second round draw.

He said: “For some reason, I don’t know why, we’re struggling to put our chances away.

“We are creating so I’m not going to worry too much about it at the moment but I told them to stay patient.

“To be fair to Simeon, he’s probably scored the hardest of the chances that he had – it happens.

“The pitch was soft and that probably made it a bit more even and credit to Sudbury because they kept going, but we’re through and that’s the main thing.”

The hosts’ preparations had been disrupted by an illness in their squad in the last week and two changes were made to the starting line-up from the one that lost 1-0 at Woking in the league two weeks previously.

Ryan Peters and Matt Paine returned, while Remy Clerima and Charlie Strutton were only fit enough to begin on the bench.

After a slow start it was Akinola who provided the biggest goal threat for the hosts, hitting the post in the 20th minute and then seeing an effort cleared off the line soon after.

Not being able to make the most of chances created has been a problem for Braintree in recent months and meant the tie was goalless at the interval, but that changed 12 minutes after the restart.

It was Akinola once again to whom the chance fell and this time he made no mistake, volleying home after a clearance fell to him.

Neither side gave up in their pursuit of goals, but in the end Akinola’s goal proved enough to take Braintree through.