Badshot Lea 3, Raynes Park Vale 2

ON the face of it, an odd-goal-in five win against a struggling Raynes Park Vale side may not seem anything to particularly write home about.

But that would be to ignore Lea’s successes in various cup competitions so far this season which are already threatening to leave Gavin Smith’s side adrift in the league.

The Baggies, who had an entertaining run to the second qualifying round of the FA Cup and have already made it through to the first round proper of the FA Vase, have already accrued four games in hand on half a dozen sides in their division.

And with a trip to Wiltshire on Saturday to face Western League side Westbury United in the Vase, that fixture descrepancy is set to widen further.

“It’s great to get three points because we are going into another cup weekend where we’re not playing league games and other teams are, so if results didn’t go our way we could find ourselves second from bottom,” said Smith, who saw his side move up three places to tenth on the strength of Saturday’s nervy 3-2 win over Raynes Park Vale.

“If you want to be up where we want to be then we need to be averaging two points per game, and that was a good place to start,” he added.

And that’s exactly where Lea are at present, having picked up four wins from six games, thanks to two goals from Met Police loanee Tom Cursons and a penalty from talismanic Nic Ciardini.

Having gone behind early, to perhaps rekindle memories of Lea’s shock 3-1 defeat at home to lowly Banstead Athletic on their last league outing at Westfield Lane, the Baggies hit back quickly to go in front, with evergreen full back Darren Blake setting up Cursons for his first and then being brought down for the penalty.

But they needed a second-half winner from Cursons, who was also on target in the Premier Challenge Cup win over Redhill the previous Tuesday, to wrap up the points and stay in touch with the sides at the top of the table.

“Tom gets into the right positions to score goals which is, first and foremost, what you need to do as a striker and you are always giving yourself a chance to score. It doesn’t just happen, he’s been the first person I’ve seen getting in the right positions all the time, so he obviously knows how to play,” said Smith.

“He could have scored again after Drew (Matthews) put in a great ball at 2-1. On another day he puts it away, but that’s how it’s going a bit at the moment.

“If we can get a couple of goals up, like we did against Camberley and Frimley Green, we will grow in confidence and would probably go on and win by a bit more. But we’re missing those chances and then giving something away at the other end. We’re letting the other teams stay in with a chance of getting back into games.”

Next up is that testing trip to Wiltshire to play fellow step five side Westbury, who beat Alton Town 2-1 in the previous round.

“I had a chat with (manager) Kev Adair at Alton, because Westbury knocked Alton out in the last round, and his opinion at the time was that he was disappointed that they hadn’t beaten them.

“But they have picked up since they beat Alton and are now fourth in their league and they’ve been on a good run, so it’s going to be tough.”

Badshot Lea: Lunn, Blake, Roberts, Hedley, Flanaghan, Lloyd, Matthews (Ford 89), Hawker, Cursons (Cadete 72), Ciardini, Medcraft. Subs (not used): Russell, Pound.