Cowes Sports 3 Andover Town 2.

Westwood Park has rarely been a happy hunting ground for North Hants sides and Saturday’s game was no exception as Andover Town went down in front of a vociferous and ill mannered home crowd on Saturday.

Manager Neil Benson gave a debut to Eddie Perrett up front alongside Michael Dixon in what appeared to be a new narrower formation with both wide men Ollie Yates and Claudio Herbert on the bench and he had to further reshuffle early in the game when Jordan O’Donnell was injured and replaced by Danny Field. Despite that Town posted their usual early goal in bizarre fashion when Lloyd Foot collected a ball near the corner flag and his cross somehow went in just under the bar.

On 20 minutes it was 1-1 as John McKie’s free-kick took a wicked deflection and wrong footed Jake Wellesley-David. The parity lasted two minutes as Tom Riddell netted from the edge of the box after Dixon’s effort had been blocked and in what was an end to end match Mc Kie was just wide before Wellesley David did well to deny Jarred Weatherick just on the break.

Four minutes after the break Weatherick was on target as Cowes brought it back to 2-2 and with both sides going for broke Dixon escaped but shot over which proved to be Town’s best chance.

On the hour Benson through on Herbert and Yates but Cowes were on top despite a non stop performance from Lewis Benson and almost took the lead when McKie shot wide of an open goal following a defensive mix up. Ten minutes from time Cowes netted what proved to be the winner when a back pass created havoc and McKie rolled the ball into the empty net.

Town knew it wasn’t their day minutes from the end when Cole Hinchcliffe hit the base of the post from a free-kick but there will be days like these in the next four months as the new club strives for the Premier Division.

Report on tonight's match at Tadley plus reaction and pictures in Friday's Advertiser.