After second half goals from Brad Potter and Clayton Hodges, together with a last-minute winner from seasoned midfielder Joel Skyers away against Fownhope Reserves bought both a valuable 3-2 victory and a great start to the new year in Division Two of the Herefordshire FA County League, Ledbury Town Swifts were brought back down to earth with an almighty bump this week when they suffered an 8-2 demolition away at Belmont Rangers.

Belmont had already dealt out a 4-2 defeat to Richard Thick and Luke Ledbury’s new side this season at the Ledbury Rugby Football Club Ross Road ground during their final game of 2021 last month, when a brace from Ken Hooper and further goals from Craig Forsyth and James Powell overcame the home goals scored by Ledbury Town Football Club chairman Pete Boyle and fellow veteran team-mate Duncan Preedy, and in this latest meeting between the two sides at Belmont Abbey, the Ledbury third string went 3-1 down by half-time after missing a sitter just before the interval.

The visitors put in a dominant first twenty minutes of the latter half of play yet still couldn’t pull any goals back, even if Jamie Roberts managed to add a second successful penalty to his earlier spot kick which made it past the opposing keeper as youngster Khayd Saxelby was named Swifts’ man of the match.

Hooper hit the net a further four times, with Forsyth and Powell both adding additional braces to their sizeable goal tallies this season as Ledbury continued to concede against the run of play during the second period and essentially collapsed.

Reflecting on a day to forget for the visitors, Thick commented:

“We got what we deserved really – flattened 8-2 by our hosts and too many of our boys simply gave up. We have so many players coming back from both Covid and injury, with some of the lads going down with Covid on the Saturday morning. All in all, just a bad day all round.”

The Swifts now have a fortnight to regroup and recuperate from this latest setback, remaining ninth in the league table as the first two games of February present a real chance to make up ground, as Thick and Ledbury’s team host lowly Tenbury United Colts on Saturday 5th February, before travelling to the Seven Site to face Dore Valley the following week after a scheduled first fixture against the league basement boys was postponed last weekend owing to a frozen pitch at the Ledbury Rugby Football Club Ross Road ground (both games KO 2:00pm).

The Ledbury third string have already defeated Tenbury once this season with a 3-0 victory at Palmers Meadow, when this first victory of the season back in mid-November finally lifted Thick and Ledbury’s side off the foot of the league table when a brace from Samuel Palmer-Young and an additional goal from Dave Feakins secured the first three points of the season, with sixteen-year-old Jake Clueit pipping teenage team-mate Jude Locker to the Swifts’ man of the match accolade that day.