St Helens Town 2 Ashton Town 0, Stockport Town 3 St Helens Town 1.

With only one game remaining – at home to title-chasing Charnock Richard at Prescot on Saturday – St. Helens Town look destined to finish in mid-table in the Hallmark Security First Division after beating bottom club Ashton Town last Thursday 2-0, but losing 3-1 away to Stockport Town on Saturday, after taking an early lead, writes Glyn Jones.

Injuries to leading scorer and captain Andy Gillespie have restricted his appearances to cameo roles in recent games and a shortage of fit strikers have meant that manager Alan Gillespie has not been able to field a settled side on the run in towards the end of the season. Nevertheless, Town have performed creditably against teams towards the top end of the table and nobody, apart from likely Champions Widnes, have had an easy ride.

Thursday’s game was no cake-walk. Ashton belied their basement status and their largely youthful side had far more chances than St. Helens, but their finishing let them down. Town, on the other hand, used their cool, experienced heads to better effect and took an early lead through Ste Rigby on 15 minutes and went in 1-0 up at the break and made sure of the points with a rare Paul Carney goal in the 55th minute.

Luke Edwards returned to the side from injury at Stockport on Saturday and Town started like a house on fire, Edwards himself netting on 6 minutes, seizing on a mistake from Stockport’s Downes to dispossess him and drawing keeper Fielding before scoring easily to give the visitors an early lead. St. Helens very nearly went two-up, Danny Lomax noticing Fielding off his line and audaciously chipping him from 40 yards out 17 minutes into the game but somehow, Fielding recovered to dash backwards and flip the ball around his right post.

Stockport equalised two minutes later after a move down the right saw the ball whipped across and Ben Connolly lashed a shot home just out of Adam Fairchild’s reach inside his left-hand post.

With half-time approaching, Town were awarded a corner and Liam Dodd narrowly failed to score with a header just before the referee’s whistle sounded for the break and the teams went in level at 1-1.

The second half began just as the first had, with St. Helens in the ascendancy. Luke Edwards twice carved open the home defence only for his first shot to be blocked, then his second was saved, but from that point on it was all Stockport. On 59 minutes, the home side took the lead for the first time, giant centre forward Ben Halfacre netting to put his side 2-1 up. With tiredness setting in, Alan Gillespie took off Anthony Dunleavy, Adam Donohue and Anthony Presho and sent on sons Andy and Alex, together with Eddie Pegler on 64 minutes, but Stockport stepped up a gear and, with 13 minutes remaining, Eddie Driver scored their third goal with Town’s defence caught napping.

There was still plenty of time for Town to respond, but their luck was out as first Rigby hit a post from a corner then, in the closing stages, Carney drove a shot against the same upright. It was just one of those days.