GARETH Davies said he had mixed emotions after his Malmesbury Victoria side’s 3-2 over Fairford.

Davies was a player at Fairford for a number of years but returned on Saturday to pick up a surprise win over his promotion-chasing former club.

Malmesbury have been in good form recently, taking 10 points from their last five games, winning three and drawing one.

The visitors streaked out into a two-goal lead before half-time, Matty Cooper and Ryan Welland getting the goals. Fairford, whose hopes of a top-two finish are now over, fought back to draw level in the second half.

However, the scoring was not over and with 10 minutes to go Malmesbury were awarded a contentious free-kick. Malmesbury’s Chris Jackson rose highest to nod the ball across goal and into the net, giving the visitors the decisive and match-winning lead.

Davies said after the win that his side were starting to look up the table.

“We’re kind of looking up the table now,” said Davies, “I think if we win our last four games we can sort of finish midtable, which, considering where we were back in December when it was all doom and gloom, is great.

“Credit to them (the players), they turned it around.

“It is nice in one way (to get the win over Fairford) and another way you feel quite bad that you’ve taken three point s off a team that you’ve given lots of time to.”

Despite being two up at the break Davies knew that Fairford had the quality get back into the game.

“We always knew they were decent side and we said to them don’t get sloppy, with young lads they tend to take their foot off the gas a little bit.,” he said.

“We didn’t really play the best and we battled the result out of it. In the last few weeks we’ve ground out results out and that happened again yesterday.

“We are scoring but we’re conceding a few, three points against a Fairford is a great result for us, considering we weren’t expecting to get anything.

“Paul Braithwaite said he expected to win the game but it just shows our players can do.”