Bees have mountain to climb

Devizes Town 1 Bridport 0

BRIDPORT'S second defeat of the weekend may have hammered the final nail into their relegation coffin.

Simon Price's winner shortly before the interval secured his own club's survival but has left the Bees with a mountain to climb.

Kevin Donovan's men now know that only a win over fourth placed Hallen tomorrow can guarantee their safety.

After a poor showing on Saturday against Melksham Donovan was keen to prepare his men properly for the bank holiday fixture.

He said: "We had a good chat before the game about attitude.

"We felt that we had a point to make after Saturday's game.

"You can excuse a loss but you can't excuse players failing to work hard for the whole game.

"To be fair to the players the last 10 minutes was our best period and although we were very unlucky to lose we did lack quality."

The game started poorly and the only early excitement came from Price when he missed an open goal with a close range header.

Then, with the half looking to remain scoreless, Bridport made a handful of defensive errors to hand another chance to Price.

The strong forward made no mistake and headed past Peters and into the bottom corner of the net.

Steve Sartin, Nathan Perkins and Nick Taylor all had long range efforts saved by Peters in the second period before the Bees upped the tempo in the last ten minutes.

Devizes began to look nervous and Bridport took full advantage launching a series of assaults on their goal.

The Cunningham twins, Tim and Tony, both saw efforts rebound of the crossbar and substitute Mark Lock had one cleared of the line but the Bees had left it too late.

Match Facts DEVIZES TOWN 1 Price 37 BRIDPORT 0 Bridport: Peters, Linney, Leach, Tim Cunningham, Copeland, Gawen, Taylor, Wise, Flann (Tony Cunningham 65), Hitchcock, Ritchie (M Lock 83). Sub not used: Hayter. Bees man-of-the-match: Dan Wise Attendance: 82