Southgate bandwagon rolls on (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Southgate bandwagon rolls on

5:48pm Tuesday 20th February 2007 in Football By Gazette Sport Reporter

LEADERS The Southgate Inn extended their unbeaten run to 11 matches with a hard fought victory over Cooper-Avon at The Conigre.

Southgate went into clash with their fellow promotion hopefuls knowing they were about to face one of their toughest challenges for a while and Cooper-Avon did not disappoint as new signing Josh Robinson gave the tyremen the lead and for a while Gary Newman's youngsters had the upper hand over their ageing but experienced opponents.

The Southgate, who had been slow to get going, fashioned an equaliser before the interval with Julian Alexander scoring.

But it was Cooper-Avon who started to tire in the second half as Southgate searched for a winner which arrived 10 minutes from time when 48-year-old Andy Davies fired home to earn Southgate a 2-1 success that should help to set them on course for back to back promotions.

Chippenham-based Sir Audley's Arms moved into second spot after a 1-0 win away at local rivals Chippenham United RAOB, who switched the game from Stanley Park to Hullavington Barracks much to the credit of United's manager Richard Thorne who not for the first time this season has saved a game from being postponed.

Unfortunately for Thorne his efforts went unrewarded as Shaun Jefferys netted the only goal of the game to give the Arms their win and stretch their winning run to five matches.

Biddestone White Horse may be in the bottom two, but they have games in hand on the sides above them and if they can continue to chisel out the result as they did against Corsham Park Rangers, which saw them win 3-1, it will only be a matter of time before they start to climb up the table and to a position of safety.

Chas Young opened the scoring for Rangers, but his early effort proved only to be a consolation as goals from Mark Coles, Tamlyn Goodrich and Paul Clifford earned Biddestone their fourth win of the season from just 10 outings.

Somerford FC collected a vital two points from their trip to the cement works, Westbury where they beat Blue Circle (Sunday) 5-3 in an eight goal thriller, with the result only being decided in the final few minutes of a pulsating game.

Somerford were always ahead in the game but with just three minutes on the clock the score was locked as 3-3, until late strikes earned the villagers a crucial win that will go a long way to keeping them in the division for another season.

Chris Yeo, Wayne Bury and Alex Whitehall traded goals with Dan Cox (Twice) and Martin Hemmens as the game reached its climax when another goal from Burry and one from John Rawlings won it for Somerford.

Pack Horse Rangers lost their game against White Hart Combe due to Stanley Park being waterlogged.

The Stanley Park complex, which has now been in use for a few seasons, is now being labelled the new Westmead due to the large number of matches that are being lost due to the weather. Westmead was the former venue for local football in Chippenham and it was hoped that once teams moved to Stanley Park the problems of waterlogged pitches would disappear.

But that has not been the case this term as a high number of matches have already been lost to the elements which is causing teams to find alternative venues.