Poole Town have returned to the sumit of the Southern Premier League after they put on what was possibly their best performance of the season in an emphatic 4-0 win at Slough Town on Saturday.
Whilst Weymouth went in at the break 3-0 down at Slough last weekend, the Dolphins went in with a 3-0 lead thanks to early goals from Marvin Brooks and Harrison Gilkes, and a Steve Devlin penalty right on the stroke of half time.
With the points already in the bag, the Dolphins saw out the second half very comfortably, and Luke Burbridge added a fourth goal eight minutes from time to seal Poole’s biggest away win of the season.
The win was enough to take them back to the top of the table, and the Dolphins supporters were given more reason to cheer when news filtered through that title rivals Weymouth had suffered a crushing late defeat at home to Chippenham Town.
The Terras looked quite jaded throughout the contest in what was a rather uncharacteristic performance. They never really got going, and in truth if Chippenham had taken their earlier chances, they would’ve had the points sealed by the time ex Terra Lee Phillips came off the bench to score the winning goal a minute from time.
Weymouth were second best throughout. The Bluebirds came with a clear plan to frustrate and it worked to perfection. The Terras rarely threatened the Chippenham goal, and their goalkeeper had very little to do other than pick up a couple of speculative efforts from range which were straight at him.
The closest Weymouth came to finding a breakthrough was around twenty minutes from time when the ball fell to Stewart Yetton on the edge of the six yard box, yet amazingly the tallisman put it over the crossbar. In truth that really should have been the sign that it simply wasen’t going to be Weymouth’s day.
Have all the matches in a short space of time finally caught up with Weymouth? Quite possibly. They were a yard or two off the pace all afternoon, and just generally lacked that spark.
Have they missed the suspended Chris Shephard? Again, quite possibly. The Terras have certainly lacked that cutting edge in the last three matches, but they will have the tricky winger back for what now becomes a must win game away to Hungerford Town on Tuesday night.
Weymouth won the first meeting between the two sides on the opening day of the season, but the Crusaders hold the only remaining unbeaten home record in the division, and they also possess the league’s second best defensive record.
They currently sit sixth, just one place and one point off the play-offs, so it promises to be another incredibly tough match for the Terras. They need to get back on track quickly. Whilst defeat at Bulpit Lane would not be season defining, it’d be a major blow.
Weymouth should go there confident that they can get a result though. Despite a bad fortnight, they’ve not become a bad side overnight. Over a 46 game season it’s inevitable that at some stage everyone will go on a bad run. But they can’t afford to let this run continue for much longer.
With Poole Town coming into form, the games takes on even more signifficance for Weymouth. They won’t want to go into the double header of derbies next month with much ground to make up.
The Dolphins themselves travel to North Devon to face 15th placed Bideford. Bideford are always a tough proposition on home soil, but the Dolphins will go there expecting to pick up all three points, especialy now that they appear to be finding the back of the net on a more regular basis.
Down at the other end of the table, Mark Jermyn suffered defeat in his first game in charge of Dorchester, but the Magpies can take plenty of positives from the game.
Despite going down 2-1 at Truro City, it was an improved performance from the Magpies, and it’ll give them confidence that they can take points off of the sides further down the table if they put in similar performances.
The Magpies don’t play midweek this week, but they face another difficult away trip on Saturday when they follow in Weymouth’s footsteps by going to Hungerford Town.
To some extent they’ll be hoping that they go there with Hungerford’s unbeaten home record having been ended, even if it does require Weymouth winning on Tuesday night!
It promises to be a nervy evening at Bullpit Lane for the Terras. If they could come back with all three points, it’d surelly re-ignite their promotion charge.
James Spring
