Cleeve stun Winchester

Bishops Cleeve stunned promotion chasing Winchester City as they keep their survival hopes alive after winning 4-2 at Kayte Lane, writes Bill Ledbury.

It was a lively start to the match, both teams failing to get a real foothold of the game and a number of hard challenges being thrown in.

But it didn’t take long for the home side to open the scoring. Harli Price latched onto a loose ball in the penalty area and drilled his effort past the hapless Ryan Price, putting the home side 1-0 up in the first two minutes – delight for manager Stephen Cleal.

”We’re very pleased” he said. “It’s important that the next 14 games we have, we need to attack them and try to get as many points on the board and see what can happen”

“I said to the lads tonight that we can’t influence what happens at Barnstaple, we can only influence what happens ourselves.”

Cleal expressed his delight of his sides character to regain the lead so quickly after conceding.

“I think the own-goal happening so soon after we conceded really helped, we were rightfully on top. We took the lead because we demanded it and scored a good goal. And to be fair the referee awarded them a penalty which the lad tucked away, but full credit to our lads for going right on the front foot and putting us 3-1 ahead”

“Going into half-time two goals ahead of a team chasing the play-offs gave us real confidence to go on and win the game.”

Looking ahead to the Mitre’s next clash, they host high-flyers Salisbury next weekend as they approach their remaining matches in the Evo-Stick Southern League West.

”The important thing after a win is to follow it up. Salisbury are second in the league for a reason. They’ve got one of the biggest budgets so it’ll be tough.

“But we can’t have any fear, we’ve got 14 cup finals left where we’ve just got to attack them all and see what happens. We got our first point against them away from home, which no-one expected us to get anything from there.

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