FAIRFORD Town made it back-to-back wins for the first time this season in the Hellenic League Premier Division as skipper Lee Smith’s second-half strike was enough to sink Woodley United.

After beating fellow strugglers Burnham last weekend, Cinder Lane manager Jody Bevan was delighted to his side show some grit to claim a vital win in their bid to move clear of the drop zone.

In a match in testing conditions, former Gloucester City forward Smith bagged the all-important goal in the 65th minute.

Bevan said: “It was a very, very tough game – the conditions were horrendous.

“But that is the first time that we have got to back-to-back wins this season so we have got to be very pleased.

“It is wasn’t pretty, but we are making progress, we have played a lot better this season and have lost the match.

“We are in a run of games now that it is vital for us to pick up points.”

Having secured back-to-back wins, Bevan believes that they are now benefitting from having the players he wants at his disposal.

“It has taken a bit of time, but this is my squad now, there can be no excuses,” he said.

“It has taken time, there was a time that I could barely raise a squad of 16 players and I was having to come off the bench.

“But when you look around at the local clubs now they have got some terrible injury lists – we had that for the first two months of the season.”

“We now got a settled squad, we are by no means out of the woods, and we are making progress.”

Elsewhere in the Premier Division, leaders Highworth Town dropped their first points on the road this term as they were held to a 2-2 draw at Abingdon United.

Having been held to a 3-3 home draw on Wednesday night against Longlevens, the Worthians were keen to get back to winning ways.

However, Abingdon opened the scoring before Ashley Edenborough levelled matters for Jeff Roberts’ side.

The hosts regained their lead in the second period before Edenborough drilled home his second of the match from the spot in the 56th minute.

Shrivenham and New College both suffered heavy defeats in Division One West.

Gareth Davies’ Shrivvy found themselves a goal down after five minutes at Woodstock Town and they never recovered as they crashed to a 5-0 loss.

New College, meanwhile, were unable to make it back-to-back wins as they lost 4-0 at Cheltenham Saracens.