Egham Town 1, Badshot Lea 0

FRUSTRATING Badshot Lea missed the chance to move into the top five of the Premier Division with a 1-0 defeat at Egham Town on Tuesday night.

Lea were undone by the faintest of touches off the head of Luke Maguire from a Kiemon Robinson corner 17 minutes from time as they paid the penalty by failing to convert their obvious superiority into goals in the first 20 minutes in particular.

Both Meshach Williams and Danilo Cadete spurned decent openings on a pudding of a pitch at Egham’s drab Runnymede Stadium, and once behind Lea never really looked like finding an equaliser.

But arguably the most disappointing thing was the fact that Lea failed to build on Saturday’s fine 3-2 win at Abbey Rangers, when two goals from debutant striker Malakai Mars and a header from the evergreen Darren Blake saw the Baggies twice come from behind to steal the points in the incessant rain.

“It’s disappointing, it was a real missed opportunity,” said Lea boss Gavin Smith, who saw his side miss the chance to move closer to league leaders Ascot United.

“We should have beaten them, we should be up there seven points off the top now.”

“We’ve got to get out of this habit of winning one, losing one. I’ll be delighted when we draw a game,” continued Smith, whose side have now won seven and lost six.

“If you turn a couple of those defeats into draws it looks better. At the moment we look like we are going to lose games, because the table says that. We’re losing way too many, we need to be able to dig in and get a draw.

“I didn’t think that we played that well against Abbey, but it was a battling performance and we deserved what we got from the effort we put into the game.”

After that opening 20-minute salvo in which the Baggies piled the pressure on the Egham back four, Lea failed to create much of note, but through no shortage of effort.

In fact Kallum Lunn was comfortably the busier of the two goalkeepers, reacting smartly to dive low to his left to keep out a glancing backward header from central defender Adam New and repeating the feat after Egham top scorer Anthony Thomas produced a chance out of nothing.

And he had to be at his absolute best to tip a decent effort from Maguire over the crossbar when a goal seemed a certainty.

But he was left rooted to the spot as Maguire’s glancing header from a corner on the right finally broke the deadlock on 73 minutes.

“Anyone can score from a set piece,” said Smith.

“We are giving up a lot of set pieces, we have given away a lot of free kicks and penalties. If we can cut out those errors it doesn’t look like teams will score against us. The lads at the back have been doing well.

“I can’t look at any of the players at the moment and say they are not giving us work rate and effort. It would be disappointing if they weren’t but they are giving us that, I just think we are missing big players.”

Smith and co-manager Dave Ford have been without the likes of Stacey Thripp (rib), Mac Ford (ankle), Nick Ciardini (hamstring) and midfielder Zac Hawker in recent weeks, while flying winger Nick Medcraft has played the last three games as a makeshift full back, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Ciardini played for the last 15 minutes at Egham on Tuesday night and came through unscathed, Thripp is expected to return to training tonight (Thursday) and Hawker’s return is also imminent. On the downside, New was forced off with what looked like a groin strain ten minutes from time.

“We’ve been really depleted,” said Smith, “instead of getting stronger we’ve got weaker in a busy month of football against good teams. We’ve had hard games and the sooner they are all back the better.”

On Saturday, Lea return to Westfield Lane to face Molesey in the Premier Division of the Combined Counties League (kick-off 3pm).

Badshot Lea: Lunn, Pound, Roberts, Headley, New (Gorman 80), Lloyd, Cadete, Blake, Willimas (Ciardini 73), Lewington (Cotton 68), Medcraft. Subs (not used): Pilling, Khadka.