Sidmouth Town 2, Totnes and Dartington 3 The Vikings slipped into the bottom four of the Eastern Division after suffering a tenth defeat of the league campaign.

The points were effectively lost inside the first third of the contest as visiting striker Jamie Chamberlain scored a hat-trick.

To the Vikings credit they did mount something of a fight-back and they began to get a foot-hold in the game and pulled a goal back when Andy Isaac headed home at then far post. There were two gilt edged chances to further reduce the arrears before the interval, but first Isaacs, and then Jake Boyland, were unable to find a finish and Town trooped off 3-1 down at the break.

The second half was played out almost entirely in the visitors half as Town sought to put right what they had got so horribly wrong in that first 30 minutes!

The deficit was reduced to just one on the hour mark when a period of sustained penalty area pressure resulted in an own goal. However, that was to be as good as it got for the Manstone Lane faithful who had to see their side give themselves s a mountain to scale only to come up short at full-time.

Town boss Paddy Thomas said: “It really was a case of 20 very poor minutes from the whole team that resulted in us being beaten. We do need to be more resilient as there is no lack of effort in terms of what the players are trying to do. It’s the basics that are letting us down. We have swiftly gone from being hard to break down to having a soft centre – and that runs through the team! A few changes need to be made and as the squad is getting stronger we have a lot of choice. We will keep going and try and improve.”

On Saturday Town entertain table-topping Galmpton United (3pm).