ACE JAMES SEALS BIG WIN FOR ROMANS!
ANEAR-PERFECT performance saw Bath City see off play-off rivals St Albans.
Tom Smith and Richard Chin benefitted from mistakes with James Alabi adding a late third.
Shaun Jeffers pulled one back in added time, ending City’s run of five successive clean sheets. But it was only consolation for the visitors who lost for the first time under interim boss Jon Meakes.
“It’s the manner which we’ve lost which has annoyed me,” he said. “We gifted them three goals.”
Smith teed up Tom Smith inside 30 seconds, but his touch was heavy and Michael Johnson denied him.
Ewan Clark prodded on to the post from Joe Raynes’ teasing cross before Cody Cooke charged down the keeper and scooped over.
A lapse saw the deadlock broken. Former Bath loanee Dan Bowry, stumbled under minimal pressure from Clark, who centred for the unmarked Smith to side-foot home.
St Albans made a confident start after the break without testing the well-protected Josey Casa-Grande.
In response, Johnson saved well from Cooke after Clark and Dan Greenslade linked up down the left.
The visitors gift-wrapped a second just past the hour. Johnson completely air-kicked Bowry’s backpass and the alert Chin stole in to stab home from a yard out.
Two quick chances came and went for Smith before he was replaced by Scott Wilson.
Cooke should have made the game safe on 73 minutes. Ben Smith’s careless pass towards his keeper was easily latched upon, but the forward shot a yard wide.
Instead his replacement Alabi recorded his first goal for the club.
Ewan Clark’s ball down the right preceded a slip from Michael Clark, allowing Alabi a run on goal. Johnson initially denied him but it looped up for the striker, who cleverly nodded in the rebound.
Jeffers’ 24th of the season came after he span on the edge of the box and planted into the bottom corner.
Alabi’s diving header from Elliott Frear’s cross flew just wide but it mattered not.
“There were some really big individual displays as well as a fine team one,” said a happy Bath boss Jerry Gill.