Sidmouth Town’s excellent end to the South West Peninsula League Eastern Division season continued as they defeated Exwick Villa 4-3 in a thrilling midweek evening encounter at Manstone Lane.

The Vikings were good value for the points, but they had to come from behind after falling a goal down when, not for the first time in recent weeks, a corner was not cleared and the visitors promptly punished the hosts to take the lead.

One thing the Vikings are not short of this season is character and it came to the fore once again as manager Josh Stunell tweaked the formation and was rewarded in the 25th minute when 16-year-old Tyler Wellman found himself unmarked in the box and the youngster was left with a simple ‘tap in’ to level things up. That proved to be the end of the first half scoring, but Town reached the interval very much as the team in the ascendency.

The first 10 minutes of the second half saw plenty of even-steven play, but then the home side took charge and enjoyed a 20-minute spell of complete domination led by the tireless midfield of Olly Binion, Ryan Davies and Wellman.

It was teenager Binion that fired Sidmouth ahead, smashing home from a tight angle 18 yards out from goal in the 60th minute.

Town took a 3-1 lead just 10 minutes later with another goal of genuine quality with Connor Swingler hitting a first time effort into the top right hand corner of the goal.

Town then seemed to sit back, indeed switch off and the tempo of their game dropped to such a level that Exwick Villa took charge scoring twice in the 80th and 85th minute to make it 3-3.

However, Town boss Joss Stunell then made a masterful switch with the introduction of Dan Evans being a ‘game changer’!

The highly rated midfielder got the Vikings playing again and it was Evans who set up Ben Burrows, but unfortunately the latter missed two glorious chances; the fleet footed forward will surely not get two better opportunities to score!

With time running out leading scorer Cameron Vere received the ball from Evans on the edge of the 18-yard box with his back to goal, the powerful forward rolled his marker and placed a shot into the bottom left hand side of the goal past a despairing Fred Kingdom in the Villa goal for a stunning winner.

The Town boss said: “That was a game of highs and lows for sure! One minute we were in cruise control and then the youngsters in the team learned a salient lesson in the importance of not letting tempo – or standards- drop at any stage in a contest and we were pegged back from a coasting 3-1 to be all square at 3-3. When the winner went in it was a special moment indeed. We deserved the win and the point means we have now gone one batter than last season’s tally with one game still to go and that means we continue to go in the right direction as a club in terms of year-on-year improvement.”