Suburbs overcome early setback to maintain late-season goal

The danger was always there but Nelson Suburbs have avoided another Western catastrophe, beating the lowly team 3-1 at English Park in Christchurch on Saturday.

When it’s all said and done and the Mainland Premier League comes to a close for 2016, Suburbs will look back to where points were lost. The most glaring of those will be their 1-0 loss to West- ern in the third week of the competition.

Those three points still wouldn’t be enough to lift them into the lead but eight points back from Cashmere Technical and six points back from Coastal Spirit with just four weeks to go, it would have been enough to keep them in the title race.

Now targeting five wins from their final five games to see out the season on their own terms, Suburbs were able to tick the first team off that list after Campbell Banks’ goal cancelled out one from Western’s Hamish Cadigan in the opening 10 minutes before Atkin Kaua and Fox Slotemaker made it 3-1 in the second half of the potential banana skin fixture.

‘‘The boys didn’t panic when we were down and they got back into game. Conceding an early goal wasn’t ideal but it was good to get the win anyway,’’ player-coach Ben Wright said.

‘‘We didn’t play particularly well but in patches we did and we created enough opportunities. I always thought we’d go on and win the game.’’

Suburbs started with a back three of Jonathan Gough, Mark Johnston and Daniel Allan with Josh Moffat and Sean Parkes oper- ating as wing backs but they reverted to their more familiar system of a four-man defensive unit before halftime, Wright suggesting the change didn’t have the intended effect.

‘‘It takes a lot of work to play that formation and a bit more understanding and work on the training ground.’’

Suburbs got good impact off the bench, Tom Marston making a break down the left with his first touch Of the game to set up Kaua’s goal while Matt Tod-Smith was lively. Kaua, playing in his final game before he heads home to the Solomon Islands to link up with S-League side Marist Fire, wore the captain’s armband.

In other games, Cashmere beat Ferrymead Bays 2-0, Coastal Spirit beat Halswell 3-0 and FC Twenty11 edged Universities 1-0.