Almondsbury UWE 3

Shepton Mallet 2

Shepton deserved at least a point from their visit to Cadbury Heath to play Almondsbury UWE, but their luck was out as the home side prevailed by the odd goal in five at the end of a highly-entertaining encounter.

Shepton made the best possible start, scoring after only two minutes. Dave Burborough was fouled just outside the penalty box and Joe Laird rolled the resulting free-kick to Damien Preece, whose low drive easily beat home keeper Stuart Wood.

The home side came back strongly and Rob Banfield had to be alert to twice clear dangerous crosses from UWE's lively Jordan Cooper.

However, in the 14th minute Banfield was harshly adjudged to have pushed an opponent off the ball in what looked like an innocuous challenge and the referee awarded a penalty. Chris Church converted to level the scores and the same player almost put his side in front a couple of minutes later, shooting just wide.

Midway through the half, UWE did go ahead after Cooper again caused problems down Shepton's left side, and then crossed to Tom Cookman for an easy tap-in.

To their credit, Shepton reacted well to going behind and started to dominate play, with the front three of Burborough, Matt Crouch and particularly Preece causing problems for the home defence.

Preece went close twice either side of the half-hour mark and Crouch shot just wide soon afterwards.

Preece went close again with a free-kick, but the half ended with a scare at the other end as Shepton keeper Liam MacFarlane made a brilliant pointblank save from UWE's Rob Lawrence.

Straight from the restart, Burborough and Crouch worked a forward move, Crouch passed to Preece who netted, but not before straying a yard offside.

Preece was not to be denied his and Shepton's second goal for long, however, when he latched on to a loose ball after Burborough did well to challenge against two UWE defenders and hammered a shot past Wood in the 50th minute.

For the next half hour, Shepton poured forward and Laird had two fine strikes, the second forcing an excellent stop from Wood.

Lucas Ward missed a good chance with a header and further half-chances came and went for Crouch and Kris Allen. It was Allen, though, who came off second best in a challenge for the ball with UWE's Matthew Brown 10 minutes from time, and Brown beat MacFarlane with a cross shot to score the deciding goal against the run of play.

That said, MacFarlane had to be on his toes to stop home substitute Marcus Duharty adding a fourth, before Shepton finished strongly, creating further chances through Crouch, and an Allen shot that Wood did well to save.

The visitors' misfortune was summed up with the last kick of the game when a Kris Allen drive crashed against the bar and rebounded to safety.

Richard Healey had a fine game for Shepton, working his socks off in midfield alongside Laird to give the forwards more possession than they have probably had all season.

However, Preece undoubtably stole the show, and if manager Keith Brown can extract more performances like this one from his players, Shepton can finish the season on a positive note.

On Saturday, Shepton visit Keynsham Town (3pm).