Mole Valley march on

Combined Counties Div One

Mole Valley SCR 5

Hanworth Villa 4

Mole Valley SCR laid down a marker to the rest of the division with a thrilling victory over fellow promotion hopefuls Hanworth Villa.

The nine-goal encounter ensured Darren Salmon's side stayed top of the division one table.

However, things didn't start well for the Mole Valley side. A confident unchanged SCR side were stunned after initially having what looked a perfectly good goal disallowed, after Jay Holden was penalised for a shoulder charge before calmly finishing.

Minutes later, things then got worse as Higgs gave the visitors an early lead. A long angled free-kick to the far post saw SCR fail to deal with the visitors' aerial presence and Higgs fired home his free header.

As the score suggests it was an open affair and Valley levelled things through the in-form Holden. A near carbon copy of his earlier disallowed effort saw him fire past the Villa keeper to quieten the visiting support.

Just two minutes later Barry turned the home side's fortunes. Holden's perfectly weighted pass was met first time by the impressive Barry who made no mistake blasting low past the Villa keeper's despairing dive.

Villa looked lively in attack, creating space and asking probing questions of the home rearguard. Villa's Buss equalised as he lifted his 25-yard strike over the stranded Bowden in the MV goal.

Mole Valley stuck to the task and gave themselves some breathing space as Barry notched his second with another super strike and Jay Holden's lightning reactions saw him follow up to pounce from six yards to give his side a two-goal cushion just before half-time. It was Holden's 27th goal of the season.

A resurgent Villa came out from the restart and caused the SCR back line problems with their direct running.

Villa eventually struck back on 72 minutes after a clumsy tackle gifted them a free-kick just outside the home side area. The ball was delivered in at pace and was met by the head of Woodard, just managing to steal a march on SCR skipper Dave Young and firing his header past Bowden reducing the deficit to one goal.

As the match swung toward the last 10 minutes it looked like it could still go either way.

Valley eventually found a way through for Holden to snatch his fourth hat-trick of the season, but not before he had fired his penalty kick against the woodwork for the second time in successive weeks.

Attacking down the left Young slid the ball through to Holden to cut inside from the bye-line and drive his shot into the bottom corner.

Villa refused to roll over and scrapped another goal on 91 minutes as Buss converted his second.

Only lightning reactions in the third minute of injury time from Cottrell saw his acrobatic clearance scoop the ball off the line and saved Valley from squandering two valuable points.