Sidmouth Town 3, Newtown 1

Sidmouth remain in third place after a hard earned 3-1 win over a resilient Newtown in their first home game for eight weeks.

Having beaten the basement team 5-3 away last week, the Vikings were surprised to see a completely different team opposing them and one that caused them plenty of problems.

Luckily this lifted the hosts and they played some very attractive football and moved Newtown around well, while creating plenty of chances. The quality of ball that was hitting the visitors’ area from out wide was outstanding but it took an own goal to give them the lead at half time.

The second half was a similar story with Sidmouth playing football and Newtown hitting it long, but the Vikings had by now got to grips with this tactic and, after a long spell of pressure, deservedly scored a second through Kev Dorman.

Newtown applied pressure with some good passing and, with 25 minutes left, got back to 2-1 and the game was in the balance for 10 minutes until Kev Dorman got his second for the final score of 3-1.

Manager Nick Ogden was pleased with the result and said: "I'm surprised they are bottom because they certainly are better than that but in the end we did enough to win and that's six on the spin now.

“Once Mark Badcock and Man of the Match Matt Leggett got on top of their forwards, that gave us the opportunity to put pressure on their defence. Robbie Powell did very well too in clearing a lot up behind our back line. All in all we have to be happy with our form since Christmas and for us to be where we are now is credit to the players and testament to what a bit of hard graft will do for you.

“We are on target to hit 49 points and that's what we wanted 11 games ago, so it would be nice to finish with two more wins, starting against one of our rivals Colyton on Saturday, in front of, I hope, a large crowd and our club sponsors."