Sutton Common Rovers 0 Tooting and Mitcham United 1 – 24 January 2026 Report

Match Report

A second minute goal from skipper Antonio Simeone ultimately proved enough to seal the points, and keep the Terrors in contention as the ‘best-of-the-rest’ behind leaders Cobham, afer a nervy – but successful – sojourn just down the road, in neighbouring ‘leafy Carshalton’ (well, it used to be leafy when I was a kid, and was somewhere for the good citizens of Mitcham and Tooting to aspire to inhabiting to raise their social status in life…)

But I digress; the points were bagged early here, to improve an already impressive away record; this took our total on the road to twenty-nine points – seven more than we’ve collected at home – and meant we came out on top in our mini-series against our nearest neighbours in the division. This was our third meeting in this campaign, and this success, coupled with a 3-1 triumph in the Surrey Senior Cup back in October, gave us our second triumph. Both of those results have now put to bed the disappointment of SCR’s 4-1 victory here, back in September, in the previous league outing.

In truth, despite the closeness of the scoreline, the Terrors could – and should – have won this encounter far more comfortably – but how many times have we said that this season? The fact is we carved out the bulk of the chances, and thankfully took the very first one – otherwise we might have found ourselves making the short journey home with a solitary point to show for our efforts.

Just two minutes had elapsed when the Terrors’ early attacking efforts yielded a corner. From the kick, Simmo outjumped evrybody else in the penalty area, both friend and foe, to send a powerful header into the net giving home keeper Emmanuel Olajide no chance – and we had the perfect start.

We continued to carve out the lion’s share as the half wore on, but couldn’t add to the tally and departed for the half-time break with the slenderest of advantages.

The second period continued in much the same vein, with Tooting doing the bulk of the attacking, and the home side almost adopting the typical pattern of an away team – sitting back, allowing their opponents to come to them, and hoping to hit them with a counter-attack.

Their efforts were mainly restricted to long-range shots, which did nothing to trouble a solid defence marshalled superbly by skipper Simmo, or set-pieces. When they did manage to breach our back line, Toby McKimm was equal to everything thrown at him, and never looked likely to sully his clean sheet.

There were a few nerves late on, when Rovers attempted to mount some resistance and force us back, but the 200+ crowd – the majority of whom were cheering on the visitors here – were in good voice and roared their favourites home, safely negotiating a tricky hurdle to maintain their challenge in the top five.

Team Lineup