Sidmouth Town 1, Plymstock United 2 Sidmouth went into their bottom of the table clash with visiting Plymstock knowing they had a real chance of gaining a morale boosting victory and looked solid from the first whistle.

Having had to bring in six players from the reserve side it was an encouraging start and tied in with the outstanding performance of Mike Stamp and hard work of the whole team they went one up after 17 minutes when a well-flighted corner saw Mike Stamp power a header in.

The rest of the half saw both teams contest every ball, but Sidmouth’s defence coped admirably with everything that the visitors could throw at them and half-time arrived with the Vikings 1-0 up.

The second half followed a similar pattern to the opening 45 minutes until the visitors started to get on top and, after a defensive mix-up, the home side conceded a free-kick on the edge of the area and the ball was duly slammed home.

The visitors now had the wind in their sails and were looking more dangerous, but still the defence was holding out, when in the 87th minute, a needless penalty was conceded.

Jack Burgess made a superb save to turn the spot-kick onto the bat, but the rebound was then bundled home somewhat controversially.

Town threw everybody forward in what little time remained, but were unable to bag a leveller.

Stand-in Town boss Nick Ogden said: “Understandably the lads were devastated! They really gave everything and were so deserving of a share of the spoils – at the very least. However, the hard fact is that if you make mistakes or offer opportunities to score at this level, you get punished. Given that we needed to raid the Reserve’s for half a dozen players the team acquitted themselves very well. It’s a big jump from second team to Peninsula League. Whether it’s fitness, wrong decision making or ill-fortune, the bottom line is that we missed a real trick in this game. Mike Stamp was inspirational and never stopped and the defence as a unit did well. Paddy will be back next week and hopefully we can take the positives and move forward”.