DARREN Perrin admits his Melksham Town troops are resembling the walking wounded at present after they surrendered top spot in the Premier Division table following just their second league defeat of the season.

Gary Higdon, Warren Maidment, Kieran Baggs, Ben Thomson, Joe Stradling and Jake Hiscocks were all forced to miss Saturday’s 3-1 loss at Shepton Mallet and it went from bad to worse for Melksham after kick-off as Dan Kovacs and brothers Ricky and Steve Hulbert all picked up further knocks.

Tyson Pollard proved the difference between the sides with a hat-trick for Mallet, with Melksham only getting on the scoresheet through a late own goal.

It ended up a doubly bad day for Perrin’s troops as the defeat saw them leapfrogged by county rivals Bradford Town at the summit.

Perrin admits his side have been hit hard in recent weeks and wrote the Shepton result off as a bad day at the office.

“We could have got something down there but credit to their goalkeeper – he played very well,” said Perrin.

“It doesn’t help that we are going through a massive injury crisis at the moment, which doesn’t look like it’s going to get any easier anytime soon.

“It’s very difficult when you go into a game with seven players missing, all of which are probably good enough to get into any Western League side.

“I don’t want to hide behind that as we still went there with a side that I thought was good enough to get a result and I can’t be too critical of the players as they have been tremendous through all these away games, and we just have to put it down as one of those days.

“Shepton took their chances whereas we didn’t, so they deserved to win and all credit to them.”

Melksham will now prepare for their 14th consecutive away match in the league on Saturday when they travel to Devon to face Willand Rovers and Perrin is expecting another tricky afternoon.

“We have got Willand, Buckland Athletic and Street as our next three games and I don’t think it gets much harder than that,” said Perrin.

“But we have had some good times recently so we have just got to take the rough with the smooth.

“We have just got to pick ourselves up and go to Willand and try to put in a performance that is good enough to come away with something.”