Kevin Wilkin delighted with Telford resilience

Montel Gibson’s first goal since scoring the winner over the same opponents in September opened the scoring, and captain Jordan Piggott’s header five minutes into the second half gave the Bucks a lead they never relinquished.

Manager Kevin Wilkin was satisfied with the result and performance, although he acknowledged it was a far from perfect showing.

“They’re in terrific form,” said Wilkin. “St Ives are a good side and they’ve asked questions of us in both halves and I thought they were probably the stronger side in the first period. I think we probably scored against the run of play although we were unlucky not to score prior to that.”

The Cambridgeshire visitors arrived on the back of six consecutive league victories, and posed a threat to the eight game unbeaten run which Telford had amassed, but manager Kevin Wilkin felt his team showed good qualities to resist their attempts to win a seventh game on the spin.

“They’ve had some restart moments in the in the first half that we had to defend stoutly and stay organised and committed to it, which we did,” he said. “When we got the lads in at half-time we said if we could stop them scoring and come out (well) then the second half of the game would hopefully unfold for us, which it did we got.”

Having established a two-goal lead, Wilkin felt his team were guilty of allowing St Ives back into the game. Jonathan Edwards cut the deficit after a debated penalty award, and then missed a glaring chance to level.

“We switch off a little bit, and were a little bit naive in certain moments,” said the boss. “They were unlucky, they had a good chance at the far stick, but we’ve had a couple of good chances ourselves. We probably should have put the game to bed, but I’m delighted that we’ve got through, taking the three points after so long without a game.”