MANAGER Macca Brown praised his Saltash United players after they gave second in the table Clevedon a good run for their money at the Everyone Active Stadium on Saturday.

All that separated the sides was a 20th minute strike from Clevedon skipper Syd Camper which kept alive the home team’s hopes of catching leaders Portishead in the last five games.

Brown said. “We were really really unfortunate. I saw Alex’s (White, their manager) post match comments where he reflected that a draw would have been a fair result and I agree with him.

“But credit to them; when you’re at the top of the league you sometimes have to just find a way, and they did that through a set piece and it was the difference.

“It was a similar game to our fixture at Kimberley last season, where we nicked it 1-0.

“It was a game of few chances and full credit to the lads for limiting them in that respect because for me they’re one of the best coached teams in the division in terms of attacking play and their home record shows that where they’ve regularly hit teams for four and five.

“I don’t think they even got into our box that many times, and that’s not a criticism of them but testament to our performance.

“However, it wasn’t backs to the wall for 90 minutes, we were prepared for that and thought it might be, but we had some good spells ourselves but just lacked that cutting edge in the final third.”

He went on: “Rikki (Shepherd) and Preecey (Joe Preece) ripped Oldland to shreds a couple of weeks ago, and they were both unavailable yesterday; maybe that profile of striker would have caused them some issues.

“But saying that, I thought Deacon (Thomson) grew into the game and he would have learnt so much yesterday about being a striker in this league and I thought Keiran (O’Melia) gave us a really mature performance and nearly grabbed us a draw but for a last ditch tackle by the centre back.

“I thought we had a stonewall penalty dismissed and I have no idea why, Hayden gets kicked in the head and it’s one of those where both benches look at each other in disbelief when the referee doesn’t give it, and that was at a crucial moment in the game that may have set us up for a grandstand finish.

“And that I was my only criticism of the lads really come the end, the last 10 minutes we resisted opportunities to shoot and cross, and you’ve really got to take responsibility and bang the door down in the latter stages of the game, and I felt we let Clevedon off the hook there and we can work on that.

“But we’ve shown we can mix it with teams towards the top, I know they’ve played Wednesday night and they were maybe a touch leggy but we’ve not played for two weeks and that brings problems with it as well in terms of sharpness.

“Now we look forward to welcoming them to Kimberley next week which is a strange situation for both squads, but we look forward to it.”

Clevedon: J Dunn, E Nicholson (D Bridgman), H Westlake, G Hayer, C Kingdon, J Teall (G King 56), A Camm (H Kite 68), S Beresford, F King, S Cooper.

Goal: S Cooper (20).

Saltash: T Coombes, T Badcott, A Wotton. b Goulty, H Greening, F Wilkes, K O’Melia, T Huyton, D Thomson, T Payne, J Wood.

Subs: J Jefford, E Evans, F Tolcher, L Murray.

Referee: D Bayliss.

Man of the Match: Jack Wood.