Crusaders climb to 4th

Three more valuable points saw us overtake King’s Lynn and Hitchin to claim 4th. place, but our lead over Hitchin is the slenderest of goal differences, whilst they have a game in hand. It was not the best of games, however, with many misplaced passes and few goal-scoring chances. To be fair to Bideford, they put up a tremendous battle, which made nonsense of their lowly league position and for over an hour there was little between the two sides, but two goals in a two minute spell in the second half turned the game in our favour and made sure of the points.

After the boggy conditions earlier in the week, a spell of dry cold weather and a lot of work on the pitch had dried things up and the surface was very hard, and this led to some unpredictable bounces which did not help the players on either side an no one could seem to build up a concerted attack as the first half dragged on and the visitors easily held their own. There was hope that, with the slope on our favour after the interval, we could take control, but the Robins continued to put up a determined fight and there seemed no way to break the deadlock, until Mike Jones, who had only just come on, drove home a splendid shot from outside the area after 62 minutes which gave Kyle Moore no chance.
The spell was broken and 2 minutes later Nat Jarvis scored the second goal which gave us a margin which we never looked like losing, even though the Robins battled on to the end without reward as they remain rooted to the bottom of the table.

Team; Strudley, Horgan,Tyler, Boardman, Day,Rusby(Jones),Clark(O’Brien), Herring, Jarvis, Brown(Draycott, Preen. Subs;Goodger, Rees.