Weston Athletic continued their fine run of recent form this Saturday in the North Gloucestershire Division 2 with a comfortable 3 – 1 victory over White Horse, making it five straight wins in the league, Liam Parry scored a brace of goals with the other coming from Eli Wooding.

Managers Morris and Burnham had a easy team selection this week, after an impressive performance last week, they kept the same starting 11, which meant a back three of Wayne Husbands, Paul Burnham and Chalky Robertshaw, a midfield five of Jack Bray, Steve Kittner, Lee walker, Dave Nicholls and Liam Parry, with Eli Wooding and Wes Downing up front.

For the first ten minutes of the game Weston played some of their worse football of the season, they were wasteful with the ball and poor at keeping their shape, however the way side could not take advantage, the closest they got was when their striker seemed to be 1 on 1 with Keeper Dan Morris, but Robershaw found a yard of pace from somewhere to get back and make an outstanding last ditch tackle. Weston went ahead on 15 minutes with their first meaningful attack, good inter play between Nicholls and Kittner in the middle of the pitch gave Wooding space who squared the ball to Parry who finished powerfully from ten yards to put Weston 1 up. This seemed to settle Weston down and they started playing much better and started to tighten things up at the back and enjoy more possession in the middle of the park. With 25 minutes on the clock Weston went two up, this time Bray played in Wooding behind a static defence who rounded the keeper and finish into an empty net. The goal took the wind out of a spirited away side and Weston soon went further ahead, good work out wide by Parry earned a free kick, Wooding whipped in a perfect cross for Parry to jump unmarked and finish with a bullet header into the bottom corner to put Weston three up at the break.

The second half started much the same as the first ended, with Weston looking dangerous in attack, in particular the pace of Walker and Bray were causing White Horse all sorts of problems, on one occasion Walker picked the ball up in his own half and went past five or six players, just as he was about to get his shot away he was pulled down by a dreadful tackle, which the referee did not seem to think warranted a yellow card after giving a couple of soft ones out to Weston players prior to this. Credit must go to White Horse in the second half who did not let their heads drop, although the game was already won, they kept trying to push forward. Weston missed several chances to score more in the second half and add to the score, it seemed the second half would end goal less, until the 90th minute, when the referee awarded the away side a debateable penalty, which was finished into the bottom corner, this completed the scoring to give Weston a 3 – 1 victory.

The win pushes Weston up two places in the league to forth, they are currently 14 points behind the league leaders but with 4 games in hand, although the league might be out of their hands, second place and a second successive promotion is well within their grasp.

T R Yates Man of the Match – Wayne Husbands – An outstanding game at centre half

This week Weston are playing Westbury United with kick off at 2.30pm, but will be playing at John Kyrle High School due to a clash of fixtures at their usual home pitch.