DARREN Perrin admits his Melksham Town troops are resembling the walking wounded at present after they surrendered top spot in the Premier Division table following just their second league defeat of the season.

Gary Higdon, Warren Maidment, Kieran Baggs, Ben Thomson, Joe Stradling and Jake Hiscocks were all forced to miss Saturday’s 3-1 loss at Shepton Mallet and it went from bad to worse for Melksham after kick-off as Dan Kovacs and brothers Ricky and Steve Hulbert all picked up further knocks.

Tyson Pollard proved the difference between the sides with a hat-trick for Mallet, with Melksham only getting on the scoresheet through a late own goal consolation.

It ended up a doubly bad day for Perrin’s troops as the defeat saw them leapfrogged by county rivals Bradford Town at the summit.

Perrin admits his side have been hit hard in recent weeks and wrote the Shepton result off as a bad day at the office.

“We could have got something down there but credit to their goalkeeper, he played very well,” said Perrin.

“It doesn’t help that we are going through a massive injury crisis at the moment, which doesn’t look like it’s going to get any easier anytime soon.

“It’s very difficult when you go into a game with seven players missing, all of which are probably good enough to get into any Western League side.

“I don’t want to hide behind that as we still went there with a side that I thought was good enough to get a result and I can’t be too critical of the players as they have been tremendous through all these away games and we just have to put it down as one of those days.

“Shepton took their chances whereas we didn’t, so they deserved to win and all credit to them.”

Bradford took over at the top courtesy of a 2-1 win away at Hallen. Alex Monks gave the visitors an early lead before Laurent Davis-Wilson restored parity in the opening exchanges of the second half but Karim Rendall’s strike snatched the points for Bradford.

Boss Danny Greaves reckoned his side were well worth the three points despite the narrow scoreline and praised the character of his team to find a way to win.

“It was another tough game against a side that are down towards the bottom scrapping for every point. We had to dig deep for the win,” said Greaves.

“It wasn’t the greatest game to watch but the lads battled back brilliantly after being pegged back to 1-1. Hallen game out second half firing on all cylinders and got a goal back and the lads had to dig in.

“We had the majority of possession and chances and on another day we could have had four or five goals. It was just that period straight after half-time when we were on the back foot but I’d say over the 90 minutes, we deserved to win.”