MELKSHAM Town manager Kieran Baggs said no one could argue with the final score on Saturday as his side suffered a 3-1 defeat at home to league-leaders Moneyfields.

After managing to keep it goalless for the first 45, Town took a surprise lead in the 57th minute as Luke Ballinger cut in from the left and curled into the top corner.

Five minutes later though, Moneyfields were level. And within 15 second-half minutes, the visitors had extended their lead twice more to claim all three points.

Despite the loss, Melksham still find themselves just two points outside the play-offs with 14 league games to play.

The Melksham boss was full of admiration for Saturday's opposition and praised Moneyfields for scoring three excellent goals while admitting that scoring so early in the game may not have done his side any favours.

He said: “I don’t think we could have any complaints over the final score.

“They’re definitely the best team to come here this season – you can see why they’re top of the league.

“They’re aiming to get promoted and win the league and we’ve got different aims – we’re at different stages of our Southern League lives.

“The performance was really good from us, we went 1-0 up in the 60th minute and that was probably the worst thing we could have done.

“After that, they seemed to turn on the jets and step it up a gear and they blew us away within about ten minutes.

“If we didn’t score, we might have held on for a draw, but they scored some really good goals, so I’ve got no complaints.”

Baggs praised his side’s ability to stay with Moneyfields for large parts of the game and even went as far as to say they outplayed the league leaders at times.

He said: “We’ve not just competed with (Moneyfields), I would say that for large parts of the game, we were the better side.

“There are loads of positives to take from it - we looked dangerous on the counter-attack, we defended really well, but they’re a very good footballing side and we were really unlucky.”