This was another hard battle against solid and determined opponents, but after falling behind in the first half we came back well and scored two splendid goals after the interval to earn all 3 points which kept us at the top of the table, but the league table is still very tight, Poole in particular still remaining on our tails 6 points behind with 3 games in hand.

Tom Cross was quickly off his line to thwart Ben Pugh in an early attack and Pugh was unlucky when he back-heeled the ball past the post when his way through was blocked by defenders right in front of goal. At the other end, Paul Strudley saved well from Simon Pitter’s shot and the visitors took the lead after 36 minutes when a quick break down the left outflanked our defence and ended with a cross converted by Marcus Palmer from close range. Evesham looked strong at the back and we did not look like levelling the scores before the interval.

Although we were playing up the slope after half-time, we had more than our share of play without threatening the Evesham goal until Diak John burst through and scored with a terrific long-range right-foot shot after 61 minutes, a goal fit to grace any contest, after which we looked more and more confident.

The winner came after 73 minutes when Jon Boardman went up for a Tom Fila corner and headed powerfully past Cross to make it 2-1, another great goal to add to our tally. There was another near miss when Rayner da Silva broke through and lobbed the ball neatly over the goalkeeper’s head, but a defender got back and cleared it off the line and we held on fairly comfortably to earn a narrow win to keep up our league challenge